David Lynch's world provided solace to those who felt lost in the one we know

His death was announced by his family on his official Facebook yesterday (Thursday 16th January), a few months after he revealed he had been diagnosed with emphysema, a chronic lung disease that severely limited his mobility. And the news of his passing was instantly met by a flood of tributes both from those who had known and worked with him, and those he had moved with his art.

What made much of his work so special to so many is the inability to truly categorise it according to any pre-established language, or to decode it in a way that could be summed up in a pithy explainer.

Indeed, the moods, textures and – most crucially – emotions he evoked across his incomparable filmography, from Eraserhead and Blue Velvet to Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire, are so utterly unique and inimitable that part of their immense power is precisely that they can’t be put into words, and to do so would be almost beside the point. These are works that speak to their audiences on a subconscious level, and to dig too far beyond that might be to diminish their force.

But there are some things that can be said. Firstly, for all that the term Lynchian has come to be used as a byword for a certain kind of cinematic “weirdness”, to take that as the primary identifier of his work would be an incredible disservice.

Sure, every entry in his filmography – even the more conventional ones like The Straight Story – contain their fair share of elements that could correctly be identified as off-kilter or peculiar, but there is not an ounce of forced wackiness or contrived whimsy to be seen in the world of Lynch. Certainly, there is none of the smugness or archness that characterises a lot of films that might self-referentially describe themselves as “weird”.

Instead, his work provides a truly transporting window into the imagination of an artistic mind with its own original and completely sincere way of viewing the world and the people who populate it. It was a vision inspired by many disparate things – from his love of classic Hollywood and Americana to his obsession with industrial soundscapes – and yet one that was entirely devoid of cliché or simple pastiche.

Through his impeccable craft, and with the invaluable input of a number of frequent collaborators including production designer Jack Fisk and composer Angelo Badalamenti, he created a world that was disturbing yet often comforting, bleak yet frequently hopeful, devastating yet sometimes hilarious, depraved yet occasionally wholesome. Crucially, it was a world that seemed to appeal most keenly to those that – for a wide variety of reasons – might have felt lost in, or struggled to make sense of, the world as we know it.

And like any great artist, the stories Lynch told within that world – with all its attendant “weirdness” – were bursting with genuine heart and humanity. His cinema was one of great empathy, for figures both real, like John Merrick in The Elephant Man, and fictional, like Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks (and most specifically its big screen iteration, the terrifyingly sad Fire Walk with Me).

And though he possessed a clear awareness and understanding of the intolerable cruelty man can be capable of inflicting, and his films are often full of darkness and tragedy, this was countered by his seemingly undimmed faith in the power of love and human connection, and his radical ability to see the good in people. In lesser hands, such sentiments might be expressed in manners twee or artificial, but with Lynch that was never a danger.

Though Lynch’s genius is uncontestable, he struggled throughout his career to get many of his projects greenlit, and leaves behind a mountain of unrealised work, including a series that was reported to have been in development at Netflix as recently as 2020. But while it is easy to despair at the Lynch films that never were and now never will be, perhaps it’s more fitting to honour an artistic life that appears to have been lived entirely on its own terms, and to celebrate the incredible legacy he leaves behind.

In his almost unbearably moving tribute, Lynch’s frequent collaborator Kyle MacLachlan said of his friend that “he was not interested in answers because he understood that questions are the drive that make us who we are”. And as we mourn the loss of a true original, perhaps we should take comfort in the fact that the questions posed by Lynch continue to leave us with so much to ponder.

Or as Lynch's family put it in their own tribute, “There's a big hole in the world now that he's no longer with us. But, as he would say, 'Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’”

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