CONCLUDING REMARKS

One of David Lynch's artistic influences is acclaimed Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman, who once remarked: "No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of our soul." Lynch was an apt pupil of Bergman's school of thought, leading him to develop a similar style utilizing many elements of drama, comedy, and horror in concert. This leads to some confusion when categorizing their films, since "thought provoking" and "soul stirring" are phrases typically not associated with the horror genre. But as you look over the work of Bergman and Lynch, you are hard-pressed to find a better way of describing their bodies of work.

SHORT FILMS, WEB PROJECTS, AND COMMERCIALS

David Lynch Painted by Alessandro Fantini (2003)

Most filmmakers use the short-film format to train themselves in filmmaking basics and to open doors for professional employment to direct feature films. Once these new directors make the transition into features, they rarely return to this format. David Lynch is an interesting exception to this pattern, who took his first steps toward film production with an experimental animated painting in the late 1960's and who continues to direct a sizable number of experimental shorts to this day.

INLAND EMPIRE (2006)

The Score: 9.5 out of 10

We hear many complain about the mountains of exposition-driven dialogue in Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), but can you imagine what the film would have been like without it? You do not have to, thanks to David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006). Where Inception takes place on five different levels of reality with continual clues orienting the viewer over its 148 minute running time, Inland Empire takes place on no less than eight levels of reality—perhaps more—with only sporadic clues peppering David Lynch's 180 minute movie.

MULHOLLAND DR. (2001)

The Score: 10 out of 10

A young starlet moves to Hollywood to pursue her acting dreams and a hot-shot young director sets out to cast an exciting new 50's-60's period piece. But both get caught in a dark undercurrent swirling just below the town's surface, and try to find their way through it alive. David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. (2001) perfectly captures the awe and wonder of first moving to Hollywood and the disillusionment that follows soon after. As Naomi Watts's Betty declares early in the film: "I mean I just came here from Deep River, Ontario, and now I'm in this dream place." Unfortunately, Betty's dream soon turns into an all-too-real nightmare.

THE STRAIGHT STORY (1999)

The Score: 10 out of 10

David Lynch made a Disney movie. We will give you a few moments to let that sentence sink in.

"This highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality. You're on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable. Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of mind itself. Ladies and Gentlemen, you're entering the wondrous dimension of imagination. Next stop, the twilight zone."–Rod Serling clearly anticipating the production of The Straight Story (1999) forty years before the film's release.