David Lynch (1946 - 2025)

At Flashbak: The Four Most Underrated David Lynch Films

My newest article at Flashbak -- "Dreaming with Your Eyes Wide Open" -- looks at the four most underrated films in director David Lynch's canon.

Here's a snippet (and here's the url: http://flashbak.com/dreaming-with-your-eyes-wide-open-the-4-most-underrated-david-lynch-films-17382/ )

"In many of his films, director David Lynch demonstrates an unnerving capacity to tap into surreal and disturbing dream imagery. This imagery often demands analysis or interpretation, not to mention the full engagement of the audience. 

In short, you either follow Lynch willingly down the rabbit hole of visual symbolism, or you do so kicking and screaming.

If you choose the latter trajectory, then you likely reject his bizarre phantasms as either “nonsense” or merely as “meaningless.” If you choose the former route, you may find his bizarre films something akin to a mind-altering experience…and also deeply meaningful.

With such thoughts in mind, my selections for the four most underrated Lynch film experiences are those in which the narrative elements involve dreams, or the movies function as waking dreams themselves. 

My choices (in chronological order) are as follows:"

Television and Cinema Verities # 9

...you can go deeper and deeper into a world and discover more and more things. A feature film has an ending. A continuing story doesn't. Eventually it could, but it can just go and go and go, and if the ideas keep flowing, it can be pretty thrilling."

- Director David Lynch compares film to television, in relation to Twin Peaks (1990 - 1991)

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Lost Highway (1997)

"There is no such thing as a bad coincidence."

-David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997)

"It should be acknowledged, straightaway," opined critic Eric Bryant Rhodes in Film Quarterly (Spring 1998, page 57), "that Lost Highway is, by design, extremely resistant to reduction into a definitive narrative account; by the film's end it is evident that Lynch has intentionally withheld the answers to questions inevitably provoked by the narrative's elusive and elliptical plot. It is virtually impossible to reconstruct a definitive and rational account of what happens in Lost Highway."

Critic Kenneth Turan called David Lynch's film the director's "most accomplished work since Blue Velvet" and termed it a "metaphysical stag film," (Los Angeles Times, February 21, 1997, page 10), while David Denby noted that the film is a "virtuoso exercise in spooky unintelligibility" (New York, March 3, 197, page 53).

Meanwhile, Jack Kroll at Newsweek suggested insightfully that with Lost Highway Lynch had become "the Heisenberg of cinema, telling us that the uncertainty principle rules our lives" (February 24, 1997, page 68).

Elusive. Metaphysical. Spooky. Uncertain.

All of these critical descriptors highlight the confounding essence of this beloved and beguiling David Lynch film noir. It's a movie that can't be intellectually "understood," perhaps, only "interpreted" in relation to the director's style and singular voice, in particular his pervasive use of "dream sense," the surreal language of dreams.

Specifically, Lynch has has publicly likened Lost Highway to a Psychogenic Fugue...a mental state of disassociation from oneself. That comparison could be the very key that unlocks a few of the film's most enduring and baffling mysteries.

We've met before, haven't we? Or We Got Some Spooky Shit Here...

Lost Highway depicts the startling descent into madness of a jealous saxophonist named Fred Madison (Bill Pullman).

Experiencing strange dreams about his wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette) -- whom he suspects is having an adulterous affair -- Fred also comes to believe that someone is watching him inside his own home; videotaping him as he sleeps. Fred is a paranoid man, and even his house -- painted in deep, dark shades of crimson and scarlet -- appears to reflect his intemperate, suspicious nature.

When Renee is discovered murdered, Fred is arrested for the bloody crime, but then something truly strange occurs.

In his jail cell: another man seems to take his physical place. Fred wakes up...and is different. He is now Peter (Balthazar Getty), a young fellow, a car mechanic, associated with gangster Mr. Eddy/Dick Laurent (Loggia). And Eddy/Laurent’s girlfriend is Alice (Arquette)...a dead ringer for the murdered Renee.

Behind this strange metamorphosis -- and this strange new life -- is a terrifying and ubiquitous "Mystery Man" (Robert Blake) with a video camera...a man who can apparently be in two places simultaneously.

In the Far East, when a person is sentenced to death, they're sent to a place where they can't Escape: Or The Splintered Psyche as Madison's "Escape" Valve. 

A restless spirit of madness seems to haunt angry Fred Madison in Lost Highway. That spirit, while actually a part of Fred's psyche, is manifested externally in the film; as another "being" he physically encounters.

Specifically, this specter of violence, revenge and madness takes the form of the pasty-faced, grinning maniac portrayed by Robert Blake.

In the film’s most deeply unsettling, most dream-like sequence, this specter of violence and guilt confronts Fred at a party and informs the saxophonist that he, the Mystery Man, is at his house right now, killing his wife.

Of course, a person can’t be in two places at the same time but the Mystery Man urges Fred to call his own house to confirm his disturbing story. Fred does so, and at his house the Mystery Man answers the phone. “I told you I was here,” he says.

The idea underlining this horrific, surreal sequence is that Fred has effectively disassociated from himself, from his personal identity, in order to carry out an evil, brutal deed: the murder of Renee. Fred has created a Boogeyman, a monster, to complete the task for him, since -- as a rational, evolved human being -- murder is not an acceptable act. Instead, Madison has reached deep down into his reptilian brain and created this thing, this monster.

Psychogenic fugues or dissociative orders are often precipitated by intense stress, and there's plenty of that to go around in the early scenes of this Lynch film. Sexual intercourse between Fred and the gorgeous Renee goes poorly, for instance. After some slow-motion photography and the exaggerated sounds of panting, Fred loses his erection, and Renee appears frustrated. The impression is of a troubled marriage and of Fred's looming, impulsive rage, ready to be sated. The Mystery Man appears briefly in this scene too: superimposed over Renee's lovely face. The monster's sudden appearance here is Fred's "flash" of violent intent, of rage, when he proves impotent.

Jealousy and looming rage are manifested again in the film's very color scheme, in Lynch's presentation of another important sequence. After a public musical performance, Fred rings Renee up on a red telephone and he's likewise bathed in hellish neon-sort of red light. She’s not home, and Madison's conviction that she is cheating on him grows exponentially. His very world seems to visualize this “red” streak of jealousy. Unable to get satisfaction from her husband, Renee has sought fulfillment outside the relationship...or so he imagines.

After creating the "mystery man" as an alternate identity from which to commit the murder of cheating Renee, Fred then disassociates again after the crime, creating an additional personality, Peter Dayton, where he can hide from his intense feelings of guilt and responsibility. Those unlucky souls who experience psychogenic fugues in real life often create totally new personalities, in new environs, with no memory of their real personalities or histories.

Of great significance, Madison's new personality, Dayton, is a heroic, young character who liberates Renee (now Alice...) from sexual humiliation and slavery at the hands of a powerful exploiter and abuser, Eddy/Dick Laurent.

Where Fred is impotent, Dayton is virile, engaging in satisfying sexual intercourse with Alice on a beach by night. He is the "dream" persona of Fred, as an unspoiled, vigorous, desirable youth. Fred Madison does not "snap back into being" until the film's conclusion when his Peter Dayton identity closes the loop and informs him that "Dick Laurent is dead." The death of his competitor for Renee's/Alice's affections allows Fred to be restored to his "real" state.

Importantly, this scene represents a kind of cinematic Möbius strip, relating back to one of the first scenes in the film. There are two ways to interpret it. The first is the psychogenic fugue approach. The early appearance of an unseen "stranger" at the door, informing Fred that "Dick Laurent is dead" is actually the fledgling start of Madison's dissociative mania; the sort of mental canary in the coal mine that pushes Fred to kill his wife and his competitor for her affections.

Or contrarily, one might read the entirety of the film as a murderous, disassociated fantasy occurring in Fred's dreams as he awakens to receive that cryptic message. He is only told once that "Dick Laurent is dead," and every event that happens in the film seems to occur in that very instant; his dream of murder; his escape into another identity, etc. This is the Jacob's Ladder (1990) reading of the film, I suppose.

David Lynch's description of the film as a Psychogenic Fugue also relates, in fascinating fashion, to musical terminology. A fugue is defined as a piece of music consisting of "two or more voices." Fred Madison, the Mystery Man, and Peter Dayton are all different voices inhabiting one psyche and their tale might appropriately be described as a musical fugue as well as a psychogenic one. For instance, a "fugue" often begins with an opening key (here, the "key" in which Fred Madison exists). Then, further episodes establish additional notes or keys (the Mystery Man, Dayton...). Finally, after expressing these "new" notes, the opening key in a musical fugue is re-asserted as the piece ends.

That is precisely the structure of Lost Highway, with Fred Madison -- our opening "key" -- brought back for the film's conclusion. A fugue (psychological dream state) explains the movie's narrative, and a fugue (piece of music) explains the movie's structure.

I swear I love that girl to death: The O.J. Simpson Connection?

Those associated with this Lynch film have reported that Lost Highway represents the director's free-association meditation on the O.J. Simpson trial which occurred mid-decade, shortly before the production of the film.

This clue helps us discern another layer of the film. Pullman plays a public figure (a musician, not a sports hero), who becomes irrevocably connected to the murder of his beautiful wife.

The opening shot, a point-of-view from the dashboard of a car rocketing down a lonely highway by night -- the pavement illuminated only by headlights -- even recalls O.J.’s famous freeway chase in the white bronco.

Like O.J., Fred Madison also loudly proclaims his innocence, but he’s not necessarily a reliable witness. For one thing, Fred doesn’t like the prying eye of the video camera. “I like to remember things my own way,” he complains “not necessarily the way they happened...” But go deeper. If the glove does not fit, you must acquit. And if Fred Madison is Peter Dayton...who do you arrest for the crime?

A true appreciation of David Lynch’s cinematic work arises from interpreting his symbols and reading carefully his powerful, subconscious dream imagery. In the case of Lost Highway it feels like Lynch is attempting to capture the psychological condition of instinctual, unconscious, reptilian rage, the utter madness and insanity of a jealous husband who is destined to kill his wife. Even the settings reflect this rage, in shades of terracotta, crimson and blood red.

The Lost Highway of the film's title is, perhaps Fred Madison's threadbare sanity; his psyche now fractured into blind alleys, dead-ends and avenues that go, approximately, nowhere. Lynch takes us into this nightmarish fugue state, showing us pieces of the splintered psyche and making us feel Fred's impotent, bubbling rage.

And some real "spooky shit."

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Inland Empire (2006)

"I can't seem to remember if it's today, two days from now, or yesterday. I suppose if it was 9:45, I'd think it was after midnight! For instance, if today was tomorrow, you wouldn't even remember that you owed on an unpaid bill. Actions do have consequences. And yet, there is the magic. If it was tomorrow, you would be sitting over there..."
- A strange Gypsy woman (Grace Zabriskie) discusses the vicissitudes of time (and "dream" time) with actress Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) in David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006).

This is an entirely personal assessment, but Inland Empire is the David Lynch movie that appears to make the least amount of "concrete," conventional sense and the most amount of "dream sense," if that is no paradox.

Inland Empire is a film in which logical, conscious connections between scenes are negligible and therefore almost fruitless to discuss or assess. Instead, the logic of dreams holds sway (powerful sway...) and Lynch's dream sense sweeps viewers from one emotional and terrifying moment to the next. For nearly three hours...

Like many of the artist's previous films, this is a "story" we can understand on emotional terms almost instantly, but not always on a clear, intellectual and practical level.

To truly comprehend Inland Empire we are required once more to undertake the process of "dream distillation." We must open ourselves up to Lynch's visual representations (dreams translated to images, via Freud's Interpretation of Dreams), and symbols, which in dreams replace action, persons and ideas.

Before we get that far, a pseudo synopsis of what "appears" to occur in the film may prove helpful.
You Have a New Role to Play, I've Heard. Or Where Stars Make Dreams and Dreams Make Stars...

In Inland Empire's first scene (after a scratchy record on a gramophone announces the introduction of history's "longest-running radio show, "AXXoNN,") two figures are depicted in expressionist, film-noirish black-and-white photography. They speak Polish.

Both personalities are "blurred" out so that viewers can't make out their faces (or even, in fact, that they have faces). This disquieting blurring effect cloaks their identities but also grants these mystery figures a strange timeless quality, as though their identities have been smudged and stretched (bled actually...) beyond the boundaries of the immediate context (a dark, seedy hotel at night).

Very soon, the man broaches sex with the woman ("do you know what whores do?") and the duo engages in it. During the act -- which is obscured by the blurry faces -- the woman asks fearfully "where am I?" and admits that she is "afraid."

Following this sequence Lynch cuts to shots of a crying woman in close-up, trapped in another hotel room and watching a banal TV sitcom replete with laugh track. The actors in this TV program are horribly creepy, humanoid bunnies. "What time is it?" asks one of the nicely-dressed bunnies.

"I have a secret..." says another ominously.

Next, in modern Los Angeles, we meet Nikki Grace (Dern) an actress up for a leading role in a new Hollywood film called "On High in Blue Tomorrows." A strange, foreign (Polish...) neighbor, a Gypsy played by Grace Zabriskie, shows up and introduces herself . She reports that Nikki will get the coveted movie part, specifically that she has a "new role to play." In sinister fashion, she also informs Nikki that the new role involves a "brutal murder" and that it has something to do with marriage.

The strange gypsy then tells Nikki a story, an "old tale" about a little girl, and it carries faintly diabolical overtones: "A little girl went out to play. Lost in the marketplace, as if half-born. Then, not through the marketplace - you see that, don't you? - but through the alley behind the marketplace. This is the way to the palace. But it isn't something you remember," she says.

Nikki is appropriately disturbed by her neighbor's creepy demeanor, but the woman continues to chatter. She informs Nikki that actions have consequences, that there is "magic," and that if it were "tomorrow" Nikki would be sitting on her sofa...over there.

Cut to Nikki, already seated on the sofa, as though time has indeed bent to the neighbor's will. It is tomorrow.

Promptly, NIkki learns that she got the part and that she will be starring in the film with an actor named Devon (Justin Theroux). Disturbingly, Nikki and Devon also learn from the film's director, Halsey (Jeremy Irons), that "On High in Blue Tomorrows" is actually a remake of a film that was never completed, a Polish film called "47." Like the current screenplay, it was the tale of two illicit lovers ,and one based on an old Folk Tale. "Something happened before it was finished" says Halsey enigmatically, and the implication is that the story itself is cursed.

Before long, Nikki and Devon begin to unwittingly take on the characteristics of their characters, Sue and Billy, respectively. They become illicit lovers despite the fact that Nikki's husband is exceedingly jealous. He warns Devon/Billy that his wife "is not a free agent" and that the bonds of marriage will be "enforced.

And then Nikki seems to slip between realities, inhabiting other lives. And this is where the movie really gets complicated. The San Francisco's Chronicle Walter Addiego explains: "Dern seems to be two other characters as well: a housewife living in a white-trash environment (possibly the Inland Empire region, east of Los Angeles) and also a hardened young woman who vents her anger at length about being abused by men (in this guise she delivers an extended and quite powerful monologue to a mysterious fellow with crooked glasses).

As we eventually suss out, Nikki's journey is part film making illusion and part reality. But the final destination is frightening and sinister. She ends up at a hotel room labeled 47, where must pass a malevolent "Shadow" to free the woman we saw earlier -- perhaps the real Sue -- trapped in that hotel room (and still watching TV bunnies...).

Got it?

"There's a Vast Network, An Ocean of Possibilities" Opening the Gates to Other Lives in Inland Empire

A close watching of Inland Empire reveals several familiar David Lynch obsessions, including sexual violence against women (an important factor in Blue Velvet [1986], Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me [1992], and Lost Highway [1997], an excavation of Hollywood illusion (Mulholland Drive [2001]), and Evil as a symbol contained in one possibly supernatural individual (Bob of Twin Peaks; Robert Blake's bi locating videographer in Lost Highway).

Also, the 2006 film showcases the "gateway" to other worlds, other realities, like the Black Lodge of Twin Peaks or the world-opening/changing "box" of Mulholland Drive. Here, there's a gateway tagged with the legend AXXoNN that transports the protagonist, Nikki Grace, from one reality to another; from one state of being to another. On the surface it's just a door, with those letters scrawled roughly in chalk on it.

However, if we interpret the nonsense word "AXXoNN," we come up with a close approximation in science: the word "axon."

And, biologically-speaking, an axon is a crucial part of our mental landscape. It is (by Wikipedia) "a long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, that conducts electrical impulses away from the neuron's cell body or soma."

The diagram from Wikipedia (left) actually proves quite helpful here: it diagrams "axons" linking sections of the brain, closing the gulf between synapses and carrying "thoughts" from one point to another.

The AXXoNN gate in Inland Empire fulfills much the same function. In the film, it links realities, identities, dreams and even disparate time periods together. Nikki navigates this gate and taps not into something personal (the "day residue" of dreams described Freud) but something much more Jungian in concept: an unconscious idea hidden in the conscious mind of the race itself; something about the "genetic" memory of women; of womanhood/sisterhood itself.

I discussed in my review of Lynch's Dune how Paul Atreides' dreams seemed to originate with the Divine, one important school of dream interpretation. In Inland Empire, the dream sense of David Lynch suggests supernatural communication instead; the magical linking of at least two women (Sue and Nikki), and perhaps more, across time and space.

The magical AXXoNN gate is a symbol for the human mind. The "longest running show" in human history is the human collective memory, in this case the female of the species' collective memory of sexual violence and abuse through the ages, across the globe.

The perpetrators of such violence are symbolized in Inland Empire as one male uber-being or presence, the "Shadow," a recurring monster figure. The Shadow is the Blurry Man in the film's opening scene who demands sex, and also an unseen killer on the prowl in Poland. Finally, he is monstrous man "guarding" room 47 and keeping a woman locked up there.

When Nikki shoots this Shadow, he changes shape. First he is a horrible female thing (an amalgam of many female faces; pictured above), but then he shows his true visage and it is both monstrous and terrifying.

The Gypsy (Zabriskie) has prepared us for the presence of this thing in her first scene: "A little boy went out to play. When he opened his door, he saw the world. As he passed through the doorway, he caused a reflection. Evil was born. Evil was born, and followed the boy."

The Evil that has followed thus "little boy" is the mistreatment of women; the "dark side" (or reflection) of manhood.

But by taking on the role of "Sue" in the movie, by becoming the receptacle for the remake's "curse," Nikki has crossed the gate and become aware of the collective memory of abuse in the "sisterhood" of women, and it is up to her to free the woman in the hotel (again, perhaps Sue herself...) who has been trapped there, unable to return to her husband and son because of the "box" (of sexuality?) where the Shadow has locked her up.

In very simple, horror movie terms, Nikki "exorcises" the ghost of Sue/the trapped spirit from the haunted tale of "On High in Blue Tomorrows." That "old tale" is about how men treat women poorly, like Billy treats Sue, or like Nikki's husband threatens her. In much the same fashion that Nancy Thompson takes away Freddy's power in a Nightmare on Elm Street, Nikki takes away the Shadow's power in Inland Empire.

"It Had Something to Do with the Telling of Time" Time is But a Dream in Inland Empire
One of the most significant aspects of Inland Empire is Lynch's complete negation -- nay annihilation -- of any coherent "timeline" of events. The film's dialogue constantly refers to time as meaningless or, at the very least, circular. Examples:

"In the future, you'll be dreaming,"

"I figured one day I'd just wake up and and find out what the hell yesterday was all about. I'm not too keen on thinkin' about tomorrow. And today's slipping by."

"This is a story that happened yesterday. But I know it's tomorrow."

"I'll show you light now. It burns bright forever. No more blue tomorrows. You on high now, love."

And, one of the creepiest incidents in the film involves Nikki passing through the first AXXoNN gate and coming upon...herself. Early in the film, Halsey, Devon and Nicki rehearse a scene from the movie on a darkened, apparently empty sound stage. But a noise is heard in the shadowy distance, and Devon investigates. The film later reveals Nikki herself is the source of that noise, observing herself, Halsey and Devon from a distance. Has she time traveled, or is all but we see or seem but a dream within a dream?

Once more, we must delve into dream interpretation or dream distillation to afford ourselves an understanding of what's happening in a Lynch film. Consider that, as dreamers, we do not experience time. In dreams, there is no past and no future, just the eternal moment of now (to coin a phrase). Time moves differently in the world of dreams, if it moves at all. More likely we -- the dreamers -- are the ones that "move;" from one vision or idea to another; from one phantasm to the next. But we don't "drive" or "fly or otherwise travel to new ideas in any conventional fashion On the contrary, we miraculously, seamlessly transition from things that happened, to things that might happen, to things that will happen. And they all seem to be happening NOW.

This is the dream sense of David Lynch, translated to film. We jump from one reality to another without conventional physical travel. The connections forged in the film are the connections of the mind, the subway path of the axons, the AXXoNN gate. A thought triggers another thought and we witness this progression of ideas played out. Only here, an idea in a scene (like the abuse of women) triggers another scene that's a variation on that theme, and on and on. The connections are the light-speed connections of cognition itself, of thought. David Lynch is an artist who knows his own mind, and Inland Empire is his mind's eye brought to the surface...dreaming on film for us.
"This Sounds Like Dialogue from our Script," or "Look at Me and Tell me if You've Known Me Before"
Inland Empire also gazes specifically at Hollywood, the land where dreams come true for some and manifestly don't for others. This is the surface/underneath dichotomy that David Lynch often utilizes in his films.

Inland Empire

cuts between the wealth and opulence of a movie star's life (Nikki) and life on the streets for several Los Angeles hookers. Importantly, the streetwalkers ply their trade on mean streets decorated with Walk of Fame "stars," a startling conjunction of wealth and desperation.

It's more than that, too. The film very much concerns the way that Hollywood (and film making in general) can take a horrifying, upsetting tale (like Sue's) and put a shiny gloss over it; "remaking it" as a palatable entertainment that pleases the masses. The underneath -- the darkness -- is buried beneath the mainstream, MPAA-authorized surface.

So, hookers -- preparing to meet their "johns" -- burst into a musical number featuring Carole King's 1962 hit "The Loco-Motion." Something seedy and demeaning has been turned into entertainment, a cavalcade of "tits and ass" as one hooker notes (after showing off her artificially augmented bosom).

As Inland Empire also notes, actors in Hollywood become buried in their parts, lost in other lives (the way Nikki becomes lost in other lives.) Accordingly, the film is literally packed with incidents wherein characters state "I'm not who you think I am." This could be a reference to many things. Like the fact that, as viewers, we often mistake actors for the roles they play (in other words assuming that Shatner is actually Captain Kirk-like; or that Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones-esque).

On a deeper level, this notation that "I'm not who you think I am" could refer to any number of important dualities in human nature The conscious/subconscious mind, the waking/dreaming state, or the idea of the AXXoNN gate again: that our brains can hold both our contemporary "identity" and the collective or genetic memory of those who came before, which we can access.

Two characters -- in two time periods and two different cities in Inland Empire -- also say "Look at me and tell me if you've known me before." It's a desperate kind of demand; one designed to foster understanding of who you are and moreso, get an exterior verification that can anchor you in the present, in your identity. Dreams are like tides...they can carry you away and sometimes you need to know what others see.

David Lynch shoots Inland Empire in standard definition video, a controversial decision which seems to highlight the seedy, lurid aspects of theis particulartale. Unlike most Lynch pictures, this is not a beautiful one in terms of color and crispness. The typical greens and reds we associate with Lynch are here in spades, but they bleed all over into human faces...and faces often look haggard and worn out, suffused with ugliness. The underlying notion seems to be of a "now" (a presenttime) exhausted by the cumulative weight of the past, of the collective unconscious. There can't be beauty here when the past is so often ugly.

Laura Dern is literally the anchor of the film -- the only person we can really hold onto while we're unstuck in time, as it were -- and she gives a courageous performance. By the end of the film, all artifice and notions even of technique are stripped away and we are looking at a person exposed, raw. It's a great achievement in terms of screen acting and actually one of the finest performances I've witnessed in some time.

Although I am looking back at Inland Empire after my review of Dune (1984) last week, I bear a deep and abiding sense that this movie is actually the mountain that David Lynch has been climbing for some time. From Blue Velvet through Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, from Lost Highway to Mulholland Drive, the artist has been ascending towards a film that speaks entirely in the language of dreams, towards a pinnacle of formalistic, expressionistic film making that can't be understood in any traditional, "conscious" fashion.

Some viewers Lynch will likely lose on the twisting mountain path leading up to Inland Empire. For instance, It has been called (by the Village Voice) "Lynch's most experimental film since Eraserhead."

But for other fellow travelers, however, this movie represents the apex of a long and intriguing journey; the summation of a career and a world view. You're on high now. Or, as one of the characters in the film notes, this movie is really a "mind fuck."

My advice to you, the prospective audience, is make it a consensual one.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Dune (1984)

"I probably shouldn't have done that picture, but I saw tons and tons of possibilities for things I loved and this was the structure to do them in, there was so much room to create a world..."

- Director David Lynch discusses the controversial Dune (1984). (Inner views: filmmakers in conversation By David Breskin; Da Capo Press, 1997)


The first (and still finest) cinematic adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 landmark novel, Dune, premiered in theaters in 1984 and immediately faced an onslaught of negative criticism. Since then, it has been remembered, often, as David Lynch's cinematic Waterloo, the Heaven's Gate of sci-fi epics.

Writing in The New York Times, critic Janet Maslin concluded, regarding the 1984 film that: "Several of the characters in ''Dune'' are psychic, which puts them in the unique position of being able to understand what goes on in the movie. The plot of ''Dune'' is perilously overloaded..."

Roger Ebert liked the film less. He noted: "This movie is a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time. Even the color is no good; everything is seen through a sort of dusty yellow filter, as if the film was left out in the sun too long." Ebert and sparring partner Gene Siskel also rated Dune as one of the worst films of the year.

Even dedicated Lynch scholars, like Jeff Johnson, author of Pervert in the Pulpit: Morality in the Works of David Lynch (McFarland) didn't have much good to say about this vintage sci-fi epic: "The Messianic plot in Herbert's novel," contended the author "yields to Lynch's Manichean vision, and the film pretends to Biblical proportions; but for all its weirdness and sprawling sci-fi excess, Dune from its inception was too large a canvas for a director like Lynch..."

Lynch himself rarely if ever discusses Dune these days, though it is interesting to recall that it is the sci-fi film he chose to direct over Return of the Jedi (1983) because Lynch felt, at least, that he could put his individual stamp on Dune; whereas in Jedi, he would be playing entirely in the world of another artist, George Lucas.

In 2010, the big question about this particular film remains this: on what grounds can a critic assess David Lynch's Dune as a failure or a success? In terms of adaptation? In terms of how well it fits David Lynch's canon? Or in the more general entertainment terms set out above, by Maslin and Ebert: special effects, presentation and general coherence?

I screened Dune again recently, for the first time on Blu-Ray and in this new format it was nothing short of a revelation. Simply put, the movie has never looked better. Mr. Ebert accurately described the poor coloring and murky aspects of the film's visuals in his original view back in the 1980s, but I can state with confidence that this problem has been entirely remediated by Blu-Ray and apparent re-mastering. Dune's colors in this format are stunning and vivid. So the visuals as part of the movie's "problem" must, finally, a quarter century after theatrical release, be taken off the table.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's look back first at the source material, and get a refresher on Dune's plot.

A Beginning is a Very Delicate Time: Frank Herbert's Dune

The sprawling, epic storyline of the novel Dune, first serialized in Analog in 1963, occurs in the year 10,191...thousands of years in our future.

Man has conquered the stars and colonized a number of planets throughout the galaxy. These worlds are joined together in a kind of cosmic Parliament called the Landsraad, and the lynch-pin of the entire galactic economy is a spice called "melange."

This all-important spice extends life and expands consciousness, but more than that it is the one substance in all the universe vital to space travel. The Spacing Guild and its navigators utilize the spice to "fold space" and transport goods and citizenry from one world to another.

The spice also boasts psychic properties, and is used by the secretive sisterhood called The Bene Gesserit, which in undergoing "spice agony" is able to access the genetic memory of all previous, historic priestesses. The sisterhood hopes to genetically forge a "super" man called the "Kwisatz Haderach." He will be able to gaze into the psychic realm where the women can't; into the genetic memory of all men in history. He will be able to see and shape the future.

In terms of narrative, the novel and the film involve a Machiavellian initiative by Emperor Shaddam IV to undermine a popular force in the Landsraad, Duke Leto Atreides of Caladan. In secret, Shaddam plots with the Duke's rival, the Harkonnens of Giedi Prime, to this end. He assigns the Atreides the administration of the inhospitable planet Arrakis, or Dune: the one place in the universe where the spice, melange can be harvested. Once the Duke and his people are ensconced there on that arid world, the Emperor lends his Sardaukar shock-troopers to the Baron Harkonnen, and there is a terrible sneak attack.

Only a few survive the Harkonnen assault, include Duke Leto's son, Paul Atreides, and the Duke's concubine, the Bene Gesserit, Jessica. They soon join with the strange desert people of Dune, the Fremen, and teach them a new way of fighting, "The Weirding Way." Paul then leads a Fremen rebellion -- under the name of "Muad'Dib" -- and alters the destiny of the galaxy itself. Taking control of the spice, Paul -- the "Kwisatz Haderach" sets Dune and humankind on a new path (one that will hopefully avoid extinction).

Obviously, there is more to the "plot" of this sweeping novel, but this is Dune's story in broad strokes. In terms of historical importance, Herbert's Dune is widely considered one of the first and most important "ecological" science fiction stories because it deals with the use, exploitation and preservation of natural resources (consider the spice something along the lines of oil). But also, in part, because Herbert's work goes into detail about many life-forms on Arrakis, and reveals how they are all inter-connected in one unique eco-system.

In terms of politics, Dune serves overtly as a metaphor for the treatment of third world nations (particularly those in the Middle East) by the world's resource-hungry Empires. Arrakis, a back-water planet, is exploited by the Landsraad for the spice that powers its economy. Yet the people of Dune, the Fremen, do not share the wealth of that resource. Young Paul Atreides, a representative of "Empire" in a way, goes nativ e in this story, and launches "jihad" against the power structure that he was born into. Atreides is much like the historical Lawrence of Arabia, T.E. Lawrence, actually

The movie version of Dune directed by David Lynch embodies all these concepts and story lines, but by necessity must abridge some subplots, minimize some character development, and truncate much of the action. That's just the nature of any book-to-film adaptation.

Among the biggest changes from book to film: Paul brings a "sound module" technology to the Fremen, which is different from "The Weirding Way" of the novel.

Perhaps more substantively, the movie's final sequence sees rain fall on the planet Dune for the first time in history (to herald, in essence, the arrival of the Kwisatz Haderach, Paul.) As I will discuss below, this is a change that, while unacceptable to fans of Herbert, works perfectly in Lynch's universe.

"I See Plans within Plans:" Waking Dreams and the Underneath David Lynch's Dune.

In my Lynch Dossier post last week, I mentioned how many of the auteur's films make an unconventional sense that I term "Dream Sense."

This means that narratives themselves -- and the logic inside those narratives -- are comprehensible to the audience, but not in the strict, conscious, Euclidean sense of "reality" familiar to us from mainstream film plots or their story arcs.

Contrarily, dreams both figure explicitly in Lynch's films as important turning points in the plays themselves and also, globally, as the mode of expression in his works of art. Dune is no exception.

Within the narrative of Dune, dreaming is an important vehicle for the storytelling. Paul's way of gaining knowledge, his way of learning...is dreaming.

Before the Atreides move to Caladan, before the "sleeper" awakens on Arrakis, the Duke's son experiences prophetic dreams; dreams that foretell of his destiny, and Paul's (Kyle MacLachlan) important role in shaping the very destiny of the universe. Specifically, he dreams of Dune's second moon, Maud'Dib and his future Fremen lover, Chani (Sean Young).

As viewers, we understand that this dream, this prophecy, represents truth and reality delivered to Paul, perhaps, by a Divine Being. Later, when Paul's destiny is in doubt because of the war with the Harkonnens on Arrakis, he explicitly ties belief in his dreams, in the prophecy of his future, to faith. "God created Arakis to train the faithful." One cannot go against the word of God," he says. It is the word of God, then, that gave Paul the dreams and inspired his actions.

At one point, when Paul is discouraged and in the thick of the battle, he feels cut off from his dreams. He experiences a moment of extreme self-doubt. "All the images from my future are gone," he reveals to Chani. To highlight this point, Lynch cuts to a dream montage in which Dune's second moon, Maud Di'b cracks like an egg, shattering into pieces in the night sky. This is what Paul fears, the shattering of his dreams and his failure to achieve his destiny.

"I'm dead to everyone unless I become what I may be," Paul then states. Thus he decides to drink the Water of Life and undergo the movie's equivalent of the spice agony. For Paul, the"sleeper must awaken," and to undergo this process of self-actualization and self-realization, he must tap into the language and universe of dreams that will allow him to, literally "control the world."

Specifically, the Water of Life will allow Paul to see below the surface of things: to the hidden underneath. This is a very common Lynchian concept, of the world in two parts: as it appears to the naked eye and as it truly is. In many of his films, it is the character who faces or broaches the underneath -- and survives its lessons -- that proves successful, like Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986). The same is true of Paul here.

That underneath that Paul sees in his Water of Life vision involves an important, formerly unseen connection: the spice and the worm are one in the same. If Paul can control the worms (and therefore the spice), he will have the Empire at his mercy.

Lynch's unconventional visuals again express the nature of Paul's revelation. The film cuts to images of outer space (the universe itself), and Paul --- laying still and prone -- is at the center of everything...the very well-spring of the cosmic mind.

We then see images of the cathedral-like Navigator spaceship as a Third-Stage Navigator becomes aware of Paul, and swells with orange light, almost like rage. Atreides has invaded their "sacred space" and rejected their vision of reality for his own. The cathedral-like nature of the Guild spaceship reveals the wealth of the Guild but also its disconnection from "truth" and "faith." The Guild is all about dogma, control and hiding the underneath. That, in part, is what Paul shatters by taking the Water of Life. He experiences a personal connection to the Divine, to "God" if you will, and no longer needs the Church of the Guild to be his intermediary. He can be everywhere at once.

Next in the dream vision, an outstretched, disembodied human hand is seen floating in space (in the center of Lynch's frame), representing, perhaps, Paul's new grip on the universe. Symbolically, an outstretched hand might also represent faith and justice, and that too appears to fit this context, for Paul's faith in his dreams has led him here (led him to the dangerous task of drinking the Water of Life), and justice is what he will bring for the Fremen...and to his enemies.

Dreams occur throughout Dune. The Guild, which can fold space and time, becomes aware of Paul through another form of dreaming: psychic visions. Specifically, the Guild conspires with the Emperor to assure that Paul Atreides is killed. This is because, in those visions of the future, the Guild has seen what Paul can become; that he can become the man who stops all spice production, all spice trade, and thus all space travel. In opposition to Paul's way of knowing, through dreams the Spice Guild uses dreams to prevent destiny; to go against the very Word of God.

Thus David Lynch's Dune concerns, in a very real sense, one man's "vision of the future" (or dream) battling another man (or organization's) plan for the future. But that dream is literal, expressed through the auspices of prophetic and psychic visions. Sometimes for human beings, dreams are all that sustain us, and sometimes dreams do come true. In Paul's case we can say that both of these truisms are accurate. His dream on Caladan awakens him to the truth of the universe and gives him the power to change the fate of the galaxy itself. The film's final scene, of rain-fall on Dune may not be motivated rationally, scientifically or out of fidelity to Herbert's novel, but it makes perfect dream sense.

Throughout the film, Paul has dreamed of a droplet of water falling into a pool, and having a ripple effect there. This shot recurs in several dream montages, including the aforementioned Water of Life sequence. This is a metaphor the process of waking up, the "drip, drip, drip" if you will of knowledge added to knowledge, insight added to insight, of faith added to faith. And the ripple effect represents the way that Paul's circle grows, ultimately to include an Army of Fremen, Atreides retainers, and even the giant sand worms of Dune. In the film's last scene, Paul is rewarded for his faith and belief by a literal deluge from the Heavens, from an impossible rain fall. Why? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach.

"The likes of which even God has never seen:" Dune's Production Design Reveals the Universe of the Underneath

Seeing Dune on Blu Ray, I realized that the film's visual quality actually makes it an equal to such great science-fiction efforts as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Blade Runner (1982). That's no small statement, but I believe it's a valid one.

Consider that David Lynch had the task of creating not one "world" in Dune, but five separate and distinct worlds, all of which had to convey the meaning of the story with images, substance and color.

The production design of the forty million dollar film brilliantly creates a context for the action, and transmits important -- even vital -- clues about the nature of Paul's universe.

The first world visited in Dune is Kaitain, home of the Emperor Shaddam IV. As a Guild space craft arrives in this kingdom, Lynch provides an exterior view of the royal city by night, and it looks almost identical to the Kremlin, circa 1984, with a few futuristic touches. It's an Old World City of long history, but also, clearly, of some sinister aspect.

The interiors seen on Kaitain are opulent, decked out entirely in gold, with ornate spires and an abundance of room and space. This is, quite naturally, the environs of a King. Even the Emperor's pyramidal spaceship seen at the end of the film is golden, a symbol not only of wealth perhaps, but egregious, thoughtless waste. The artifical, gold universe of this futuristic Midas proves a real contrast to the authentic, sun-warmed gold of Arrakis, a very different kind of kingdom. One world is all about wealth; the other is about survival.

What the viewer gleans instantly (and almost subconsciously) from its views of Kaitain is that it is a world of extreme riches, but not warmth. In other worlds, this gilded, extravagant world of affluence has much to lose. if things change, if Paul's jihad is successful. That's what the production design informs us.

The planet of the film's other villains, the Harkonnens, is called Giedi Prime, and it is a world entirely out of balance with its environment.

Giedi Prime is an industrialized realm of lurid, sickly green hues, rains of black oil, and out-of-proportion, excessive machinery.

According to Lynch, this world was created primarily with steel, bolts and porcelain...and those materials transmit the idea of a hard, unforgiving place. It is perpetual night-time on this world too; there is no sunlight to warm the human soul.

The message conveyed is that Giedi Prime is an inhuman, ecological disaster. And this too informs the viewer something important about the film's storyline. As administrators of Arrakis and the spice, the Harkonnens are incapable of understanding the important connections between the Fremen, the spice and the worms. They are not interested in maintaining environmental "balance," they are strip-miners. Again, this is something Lynch establishes visually. The Harkonnens, as evidenced by their Baron's (Kenneth McMillan) egregious acne, are diseased parasites, sucking life from others. They are so inhuman, actually, that their appetites are literally monstrous. The Baron imagines sexual delight with his nephew (incest), and Rabban, "The Beast" is a brute who takes joy in killing. All the citizens of Giedi Prime are outfitted with heart plugs that can be ripped out (leading to a terminal blood flood), and the only thing surprising about this is that Harkonnens have hearts at all.

The third society depicted in Dune involves the Guild, the Navigators. We see their massive, cathedral-like ships on two occasions, their strangely dressed travel entourage (a priesthood, clearly) on Kaitain, and we understand from their first scene (in which they approach the Emperor and demand the death of Paul), that these people carry a power above and beyond sovereign statehood. They are, essentially, Dune's version of the Catholic Church in historical Europe. Because they control access to, essentially, God (the spice), they control the levers of power in the Empire too.

Caladan is a different case all together. This is appropriate, considering that the Atreides are the film's protagonists. Caladan is a beautiful, lush world of oceans, wood-paneling and exquisite carpentry. The people here seem to live in harmony with nature, and even their lamps are made to resemble the wild-life of the planet: roaming birds. The inference our eyes draw from Lynch's Caladan is that only in a world of natural beauty and balance can the Kwisatz Haderach arise. Nurtured in a world where everything (environment/education/physical fitness) seems in balance, Paul is able to thrive; to be receptive to the prophecy that changes his life.

And finally, there's Dune. Arrakis. Desert planet. It is a harsh, unforgiving world, but not unlike Caladan, the planet seems to evidence a unique sense of balance. The Fremen with their stillsuits express the idea of recycling and giving back to the body usedresources, and that's also a metaphor for the planet itself. Here, the structures of Arakeen are built unobtrusively from Earthen walls of clay, and the Fremen store vast quantities of "their" water in subterranean reservoirs. The idea is of stoic conservation; of eking out a life in a difficult environment. Though Paul was born and raised in a land of natural plenty (but not opulence like Kaitain), he comes to see the ascetic beauty of Arrakis; the way that the Fremen have forged a sustainable paradigm and way of life in a harsh terrain.

In Dune, each of these five "worlds" (Kaitain, Giedi Prime, the Cathedral of the Guild, Caladan and Arrakis) is crafted beautifully, down to the smallest detail.

Amazingly, the sets don't look like traditional movie sets; they appear to be part of a lived-in world, and many locations (the Duke's bedroom and balcony on Caladan, the Arakeen control room, the Fremen living quarters) are only visited for very short spans. Honestly, it looks like Lynch took his cameras to real locations and filmed there.

Down to the portraits hanging on the walls, the exquisite woodworking on Caladan, and the tiles in the grand hall on Arrakis. Lynch showcases his trademark attention to detail and penchant for lush visuals here. Dune is utterly, inarguably, magnificent in this regard.

But commendably, every set, every planet in Dune isn't just eye-candy. The production design transmits to the audience a sense of history and authenticity, but more importantly, some sense of meaning in this story. Again, it's not exposition, it's not in the screenplay, it's the between-the-lines approach of David Lynch that asks the audience to examine and synthesize, from exposure to his visuals, a sense of meaning nearly "outside" or independent from the words uttered by the characters.

I first saw Dune in high school (at the Clairidge Theater in Montclair, New Jersey), before I read the book even, and you know what? Even as a fourteen-year old, I didn't find it confusing in the slightest. Then I did read the book and the movie made even more sense. But I have never understood why movie critics insist on stating that the film is confusing. It isn't confusing, especially if you trust your eyes and pay attention to the dream imagery and production design. In fact, an opposite argument could be forged here. Through the heavy use of character voice-overs, Dune is actually over-explained, over-simplified. How can someone think the movie is confusing when the voice-overs explain everything (from Hunter Seekers to the gom jabbar)?

Indeed, a clever critic could probably argue the point that by removing the voice-over narration all together, Dune would be a better, less-cluttered film. I don't know if I agree with that idea entirely, because the voice-overs, by my perspective, lend another "dream sense" aspect to the proceedings. With the dramatis personae conveying their deep inner thoughts, there's the feeling that, in fact, we (the audience) are psychic; privy to information gleaned outside of traditional routes available to humans. The insistent, personal, whispered voice-over works well to help the film's form reflect its very content. If we are to understand the story by dream sense, as Paul contextualizes his act of self-realization, it seems that the personal voice over helps.

Does Dune have weaknesses? Sure. It's biggest weakness is the depiction of the final battle, between Maud D'ib's sandworm army and the forces of the Emperor. The combat is not particularly convincing or impressive, marred mainly by poor matte and blue screen work. But frankly, there was no other way to create this scene in 1984. In the age before CGI, the important elements of the sequence (worms, ships and cityscapes) had to be entirely constructed from miniatures. Those miniatures then had to be composited with the live-action actors. Not easy, especially given the vast difference in scope between combatants (worms and Sardaukar). Dune is a great film marred by a final battle scene, but that's hardly a disqualifier in terms of quality.

Some people may also argue that the electronic score by Toto, what with all the power chords, is somehow dated in 2010. Personally, I dig the soundtrack in the way I dig the disco opening theme to Space: 1999 (1975-1977): it captures a moment in time, and has a techno-quality that still reads, even years later, as "futuristic."

Sometimes, in illuminating the qualities of a particular film, a comparison helps. A couple of years ago (uh, maybe a decade ago now?) the Sci-Fi Channel created its own version of Dune and it was an absolute travesty, an almost cardboard rendition of Herbert's story with no sense of scale or drama, and certainly no sense of production design that could rival Lynch's vision. I'm amazed that some fans of Frank Herbert's novel have taken to this version: it looks like Dune by way of the 1930s Flash Gordon: it's a two-dimensional comic-book cartoon. With dream sense and sets that express the nature of Dune's universe, Lynch's version, despite diversions from Herbert's mythos, remains infinitely more impressive and "real."

With the arrival of Dune on crisp, glorious Blu Ray, My hope is that the sleeping critical reception for this great film will finally...awaken.

The David Lynch Dossier: Dream States and Underneaths

"Waking dreams are the ones that are important, the ones that come when I'm quietly sitting in a chair, gently letting my mind wander. When you sleep, you don't control your dreams. I like to dive into a dream world that I've made or discovered, a world I choose."

- David Lynch. Lynch on Lynch, Faber & Faber Ltd., 1997, page 15.

Every year on this blog, usually through the summer, I re-visit a handful of films by a director I find especially intriguing. Usually, these are artists who have had a considerable impact on the film industry, and especially genre-filmmaking.

In the past, we've seen Friedkin Fridays, re-examining William Friedkin's career, a re-assessment of latter-day John Carpenter films (1987 - 2001), and last year, I offered a detailed retrospective of the cinema of Brian De Palma. This year, our subject is David Lynch, another director with a singular sense of style and personality.

What interests me most about Lynch is the artist's unnerving and unerring capacity to express what I term "dream sense." Movie viewing has often been likened to dreaming with "eyes open," and human dreams convey a certain logic, flow, rhyme and reason. The Lynchian dream-sense, honed by the filmmaker's waking dreams, taps into this rich and subconscious language of phantasms.

Our dreams come in a variety of forms, and Lynch's films often mimic these shapes. Consider that dreams may be interpreted, in both myth and literature, as predictions or prophecies of the future (Dune [1984]), messages from Gods or otherworldly creatures (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me [1992]), reflections of the repressed subconscious(Mulholland Drive [2001]) and even outlets for psychic guilt (Lost Highway [1997]). Lynch's films frequently deploy "the dream sense" to carry such thematic concepts; so much so that film criticism in regards to this artist becomes a study in symbols and oneirology.

And to what purpose does Lynch often apply his "dream sense" in his works? Well, that's the question of considerable interest here, one that we shall examine further. As many critics and scholars before have suggested over the decades, the director seems very concerned with the gulf between appearance and meaning; between surface and underneath. The Lynchian dream-sense is a way at getting at that gulf; of traversing it.

Mulholland Drive, for instance, is a meditation on a society of lies and illusions in Hollywood, and "the dream sense" expresses this idea, revealing how even identity itself can't be taken for granted in a world of illusion. Likewise, in Blue Velvet's famous first shot, the director takes the viewer from the surface image of an apparently "normal" American suburb (white picket fences, green lawns) into the teeming, roiled underneath world, where insects teem and toil with seemingly unrestrained energy. Both worlds exist simultaneously, but the underneath is the world Lynch returns to again and again.

David Lynch's film career has spanned the years 1977 - 2006, and during that time he has been nominated for "Best Director" by the Academy Awards three times (for The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive). But that doesn't make his work, necessarily, mainstream.

On the contrary, the artist has excelled at transforming the conventions and tropes of many genres (sci-fi epics, soap operas, film noirs) on their head, thereby investing them with new life and new meaning. There's nothing conventional at all about Lynch, and his films reflect that.

I recently watched Dune on Blu-Ray for the first time and it was a revelation. All previous prints of the film looked muddy -- as though the film stock itself had been processed through the sands of Arrakis. This new edition of the film, however, reveals the depth and breadth of Lynch's original vision; one that showcases the history, architecture and "underneaths" of no less than five galactic cultures. It's an amazing work of art, and I'll be reviewing it here, as soon as I get over my bloomin' deadline.

So that's the terrain. If you wish to join the upcoming conversation, catch up on your Lynch over the holiday weekend, especially Dune, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet. It's a strange world...

Sci-Fi Wisdom of the Week

"I'll miss the sea, but a person needs new experiences. They jar something deep inside, allowing him to grow. Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken."

-Duke Leto Atreides (Jurgen Prochnow), Dune (1984)

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)

To aggressively analyze and interpret a David Lynch film is to invite agitation. On one hand, many critics suggest the artist's movies are dense and impenetrable; that they are weird just for the sake of weirdness. Therefore, no possible interpretation for what occurs on screen exists, and the interpreter is simply partaking in a wild goose chase. Or worse, being self-indulgent.

Reviewing Lynch's Lost Highway (1997), for instance, one of my favorite critics, Roger Ebert, admitted "I've seen it twice, hoping to make sense of it. There is no sense to be made of it. To try is to miss the point. What you see is all you get."

Yet, David Lynch's films are so abundant with symbolic representation; so rife with abstruse dream sequences; so criss-crossed with narrative alleyways, and so thoroughly dominated by opaque characterizations that they virtually cry out for contextualization and analysis.

To leave such treasure troves of figuration uninterpreted or unexamined is to abandon a half-solved puzzle.

Contrarily, to delve into the mysteries of David Lynch's cinema is to grow nearer the mind (and dream state...) of a most singular American film artist. For me, the temptation to dive in is...well...irresistible.

Sometimes, audiences, scholars and critics have also been willing to take that giant leap of faith and gaze -- unblinking and unbowed -- at the secrets and enigmas presented in Lynch's twisting, tricky narratives. Many of Lynch's productions, such as Blue Velvet (1984), are indeed held in high critical esteem. But at the same time, other Lynch films have not met with the same aggressive intellectual curiosity. Exhibit A: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) a prequel to the popular TV series; a movie produced a year after the program was canceled.

As you may recall, the movie was booed at the Cannes Film Festival, and New York Times critic Vincent Canby suggested "It's not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be. Its 134 minutes induce a state of simulated brain death, an effect as easily attained in half the time by staring at the blinking lights on a Christmas tree."

Jay Scott at Toronto's Globe and Mail called Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me "a disgusting, misanthropic movie," and compared a viewing of the film to "cocaine-induced paranoia."

To many critics, the layered, perplexing Fire Walk with Me is but "as blank as a fart," to quote one of the film's quirkier characters.

Yet taken at simple face value, Fire Walk With Me is a disquieting exhumation of the "underneath" in America. In the film, we encounter homecoming queen and Twin Peaks resident Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). We follow her through her harrowing last week on this mortal coil, and see that this "typical" teenager is anything but.

If the movie feels like a case of cocaine-induced paranoia, that is likely intentional. Because Laura is indeed experiencing a cocaine-induced paranoia throughout much of the movie. She's a junkie (and the film depicts Laura snorting coke on several occasions; as well as participating in a drug deal gone wrong.) Thus the film's lurid, jittery, unpleasant shape perfectly reflects the piece's content. We seem to be viewing the film from inside a drug fever.

Quit Trying to Hold on So Tight...I'm Gone: Laura Palmer as Victim of Incest

David Lynch's films work on different metaphorical layers, and one thematic layer of Fire Walk with Me involves a truly unpleasant topic: incest.

Beautiful Laura Palmer -- the envy of every girl at Twin Peaks high school -- is the victim of incest. She has been the victim of sexual molestation by her father, Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), for several years.

Unable to cope with this monstrous reality, Laura's shattered mind has come to visually re-interpret her father's nocturnal bedroom visits as the home invasions of a swarthy stranger, a monster named "Bob."

Laura informs her psychiatrist, Harold ,that "Bob is real. He's been having me since I was twelve." Furthermore, she notes "he comes through my window at night...he's getting to know me. He wants to be me...or he'll kill me."

And sure enough, one day, Laura arrives home from school early and sees Bob prowling around in her bedroom. As if sniffing her out. It's a terrifying scene: we suddenly register the unexpected intruder in a place of safety and comfort, and almost physically blanch at his presence. Scared, Laura runs out of the house, terrified, only to see not the Evil Bob emerge after her...but rather her beloved father, Leland. He is the Monster of Her Id.

In another disturbing scene, Bob slips inside the Palmer house through Laura's window at night. In electric blue moonlight, he seduces her. In the throes of their mutual passion, Laura suddenly sees that the stranger is actually her father, Leland, and nearly goes mad at the revelation. Again, this is the thing she is trying to bury under mountains of cocaine; in alcohol. The betrayal of a trusted loved one.

How does a the typical victim deal with persistent sexual abuse and incest? According to author Ken Chisholm's article on the subject, "Some of the social maladjustments arising from incest are alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution and promiscuity." Consider these factors in relationship to Laura Palmer. We already know she is addicted to cocaine. We already know she drinks.

But Laura is also sexually-involved with at least two boyfriends at school: the temperamental Bobby (Dana Ashbrook) and James-Dean-ish James Hurley (James Marshall). She seems to ping-pong back and forth between them. And, as prescribed above, prostitution is part of Laura's life too. We learn in Fire Walk With Me that (as in the series before...), Laura has been selling her body both at One Eyed Jacks and at the film's sleazy Bang Bang Bar.

In other words, a history and pattern of incest leads to self-destructive behavior on the part of the victim. It leads to the destruction of -- and disassociation from -- the healthy ego. This is also evident in Fire Walk with Me. "Your Laura disappeared," Laura informs James blankly, feeling unworthy and undeserved of his authentic, romantic love. "It's just me now," she explains, feeling ashamed and guilty over her behavior.

At one point, late in the film, even Laura's guardian angel seems to abandon her, vanishing from a painting in her bedroom. It's thus clear that Laura blames herself for her father's behavior, and consequently that she views herself as ugly and corrupted. She isn't the golden girl anymore, she's tarnished.

This self-hatred becomes especially plain during the moment when Laura confides in her psychiatrist Harold about "Bob's" visits.

Suddenly, the film cuts to a nightmarish view of Laura as an ivory white crone; one with alabaster skin, yellowed teeth, scarlet gums and blackened lips. She looks like a terrible, corrupted monster: an outward reflection of her low self-esteem. This is how she sees herself.

Later in the film, we see Leland Palmer -- suffering his own personal hell of guilt and shame -- imagining himself in identical terms, right down to the black lips. This is the form of the bad conscience made manifest.

Those who endure incest and sexual abuse also, over time, may experience night terrors, hallucinations or insomnia. Laura is not immune from these symptoms either. She lives through terrifying nightmares, especially ones that involve a creepy painting. On that painting is rendered a half-open door; and in Laura's dream she mindlessly treads though that door into the evil world of the Black Lodge. A place were "garmonbozia" (pain and suffering) is eaten like creamed corn, and her suffering will provide a feast. She is, literally, the Devil's candy. And she knows it.

Laura is aware that she is a moth driven to the flame (a woman consigned to Hell...) and again and again, Fire Walk With Me brings up the idea of fire in connection to Laura. Donna Hayward (Moira Kelly) asks Laura a weird question. "If you fall in outer space, do you think you'd slow down after a while, or go faster and faster?"

Laura's telling answer is that she would go faster and faster...without knowing it, and then spontaneously burn up. No angels could save her...because they're all gone. The world is devoid of angels.

Again, this answer appears to be a metaphor for Laura's increasingly "fast" life (a life made even more jittery and fast by the cocaine): dating two boys; scoring drugs; acting as a prostitute...trying desperately to escape her real life and the sexual abuse.

In the end, however, no matter how fast she goes, Laura will still be consumed by flame; destroyed. The Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson) tells Laura -- in an important, if brief, scene that "When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out. The tender boughs of innocence burn first, and the wind rises, and then all goodness is in jeopardy."

Once more, you've got to contextualize this remark in terms of the incest: the act which has made the self-loathing Laura change from golden girl to promiscuous drug abuser and prostitute. In the execution of that bad behavior, the first victim is Laura's innocence...her childhood. The second is her goodness (and now she can't even volunteer to feed the hungry in the meals on wheels program...). The third victim...is existence itself. Laura understands this. She realizes she is headed "nowhere...fast."

Another frequent quality of incest victims is a protective impulse; an overriding need to save or rescue younger siblings from the life-destroying behavior that has ruined them. In Fire Walk with Me, Donna goes to the Bang Bang Bar with Laura. Donna drinks alcohol, takes drugs, and seduces a john. When Laura witnesses Donna's craven behavior -- the tender boughs of innocence about to burn -- she is roused to act. Unable to save herself, Laura does the next best thing: she rescues naive Donna. Afterwards, Laura warns Donna cryptically "don't wear my stuff," an indication that Donna has "tried on" Laura's lifestyle. But it doesn't fit Donna; and Laura doesn't want Donna to be like her.

There's No Tomorrow; It Will Never Get Here: The Spirit World in Fire Walk With Me

A central question regarding Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me involves the rogue's gallery in the Black Lodge. This gallery includes Bob, The (backwards-talking) Man from Another Place (Michael Anderson) and the One-Armed Man. They dwell in that sitting room (the velvet-lined room with zig-zag floor). Are they real? Or imaginary? Are they sentient, or symbolic?

Is Leland an all-too "human" sexual abuser? Or is he an unlucky man possessed by an evil spirit? Who do we blame for the incest: the spirit (Bob) or the body (Leland)?

In a sense, it doesn't matter a whit. It is immaterial. When criminals commit terrible acts, they often claim the "devil made them do it," right? Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me may suggest a universe of Hell (in the form of the Black Lodge) and Heaven too (in the form or Ronette Pulaski's and Laura's individual guardian angels), but it never suggests that Leland is innocent.

There may be a "monster" cowering inside him; but there is a monster cowering inside all abusers, isn't there? If evil dwells in the human psyche, then it dwells in the human psyche...and we must combat it. Leland never does that. He murders Teresa Banks, and eventually he murders his own daughter, Laura, because he is so consumed of "the evil spirit." That's what makes him a villain.

That really was something with the dancing girl, wasn't it? What exactly did all that mean?

Encoded in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is a self-commentary on David Lynch's approach to symbolic story telling.

Early in the film, FBI agent Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland) and Agent Chester Desmond (Chris Isaak) are tasked by Lynch's deaf FBI chief with the investigation of Teresa's murder. After briefing them in very general terms, Lynch's character then maddeningly introduces the two agents to "Lil" a woman in a red dress wearing a blue rose. He says, in essence, that she represents the case that the men have embarked upon.

Then, in a bewildering moment, the strange Lil dances up to the two agents, grimaces -- revealing a sour face -- and makes a fist.

Then, Lil is never seen or heard from again as a living, breathing, human character. But soon after this scene, Desmond and Stanley interpret her presence. They analyze her facial expressions. They note the color of her dress. They register the presence of the blue rose, and ponder the meaning of her balled fist. On one hand, this is Lynch's oddball humor, acknowledging the Twin Peaks' aficionado's propensity for analyzing every little thing.

But in another sense, Lil -- and Desmond's explanation of Lil -- is the audience's primer to successfully reading or interpreting the figurations of this movie. Following Desmond's example, the viewer is meant to weigh characters and events symbolically. We are supposed to "see" Bob as Laura's "safe" interpretation of her father's criminal, unacceptable behavior. We are supposed to understand the drug use and prostitution as a victim's escape from guilt and shame. Even the passing of Theresa's ring we are to comprehend as a legacy of death, carried from one victim to the next. And the creamed corn? Human pain and suffering as the food of the gods.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is really The Tragedy of Laura Palmer and the Tragedy of Small Town America. The golden girl -- the cheerleader beloved by all -- is actually a secret victim of sexual abuse...and no one sees it. Or no one cares to see it.

This is the roiling "underneath" that Lynch so frequently expose in his films, and it was never more relevant, perhaps, than in the early 1990s when this film was made. These were the early years after the notorious 1989 Glen Ridge rape case (wherein popular football jocks raped a retarded girl with a baseball bat and broom); these were the years of the Spur Posse. Suburbia's shameful secrets were spilling out into the tabloid culture in creamed-corn torrents.

Perhaps an entire American generation of teenagers was actually fire walking with us; possessed by darkest impulses.

What remains profound about Laura Palmer's tragedy today is that, in the end, David Lynch grants the character a small measure of contentment. The guardian angel she believed she lost during her last, brutal hours on Earth, returns anew (in the afterlife) to heal her pain; even as good Dale Cooper lands a comforting, supportive arm on her shoulder. Our last view of the cheerleader is of Laura smiling.

In life, Laura was relentlessly victimized...her goodness burned away by life's ugliness. In death's sitting room, of all places, peace is finally at hand.

Although this may seem decidedly bleak, it is also Lynch's balancing of the spiritual world. It may be a place of garmonbozia -- death and suffering -- but it isn't populated merely by the likes of Bob and the Man From Another Place. The winged celestial being is there too, the seraph, and that means that forgiveness is at hand.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me isn't misanthropic. In Laura Palmer, there's sympathy for the victim of abuse. Even in Leland Palmer, there's sympathy for the devil. If we do "live in a dream," as one character suggests in the film, then it is also up to us to shape that dream, and always keep Bob at bay.