David Lynch, Visionary Director of ‘Twin Peaks’ and ‘Blue Velvet,’ Dead at 78

Director-writer David Lynch, who radicalized American film with with a dark, surrealistic artistic vision in films like “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive” and network television with “Twin Peaks,” has died. He was 78.

Lynch’s death was announced on his Facebook page:

“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. 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.’ … It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

In August, he revealed that he was suffering from emphysema after many years of smoking and that he couldn’t leave home for fear that he would get COVID-19.

Nobody who saw Lynch’s works could mistake them for anyone else’s. Unlike other leading auteurs, he didn’t belong to a movement or fit easily into a genre; while his pictures echoed the mindset of a Luis Buñuel or a Salvador Dalí — critic Pauline Kael called him “the first populist surrealist” — and were influenced by such film noir landmarks as Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd., they were sui generis; his creations, in fact, appeared timeless, strangely disconnected from any particular era or place, which made them all the more startling and disturbing.

These were horror stories that mixed the monstrous with the mundane, that emerged from a landscape of dreams or nightmares, their happy endings doing nothing to erase the discomfort they left behind. They were as perplexing as any drawing of M.C. Escher, as haunting as any Grimms fairy tale, only far harder to decipher — which sometimes led skeptics to wonder whether even Lynch had the key to unlocking them. Few doubted the power of his vision and imagination, though naysayers questioned his logical thread.

While the filmmaker could occasionally descend into self-parody, critics’ groups included his major pictures on lists of the most important movies of the past century. In a 2012 poll of nearly 900 experts, Sight & Soundmagazine ranked Mulholland Drive (2001) at No. 28 and Blue Velvet (1986) at No. 69.

There was, however, a notable discrepancy between Lynch’s international standing and his domestic reputation: none of his films is featured in the American Film Institute’s most recent ranking of the 100 greatest movies, published in 2007.

via: The Hollywood Reporter

RIP.

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