Directorial Style of David Keith Lynch

Name:
Instructor:
Institution affiliation:
Date:
David Keith Lynch
Introduction
Love or hate his films; there is no denying that David Keith Lynch is one of the most celebrated American film directors. Born in 1946, Lynch studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts before venturing into film making in the 1960s. His first work was Eraserhead, which laid the groundwork for a cinematic style that utilizes ambiguity, sensory elements, and a montage of confusion. Some critics have likened Lynch’s cinematic styles to traditional American literature, obsessed with the idea that evil is a positive principle embodied in matter. However, a panel of critics convened in 2007 by The Guardian concluded that “after all the discussion, no one could fault the conclusion that David Lynch’s cinematic styles create imaginative images that stay with audiences long after the screen goes black.” Despite the criticism, David Lynch’s use of ambiguity, sensory elements, and a montage of confusion in films have created a directorial trademark that personifies his films.
David Lynch’s films are open to interpretation because they do not have ideas, conclusions, or messages that can be clearly defined. In cinema, this condition is known as ambiguity and presses the audience to inquire by persistently asking questions such as “why is it as it is”? The application of ambiguity in cinema has gained prominence in the last few decades because of the growing belief that there is no right or wrong interpretation of a work of art. Lynch’s use of ambiguity was first spotted in Eraserhead, when the meaning of the creepy baby, the shriveled chicken, and the man in the planet pulling his levers was left to the audience to determine. Ambiguity was also extensively used by Lynch concerning the meaning of the cowboy in Mulholland Drive, the giant in Twin Peaks, and the line “He put his disease in me” in Blue Velvet. The application of ambiguity in Lynch’s films is enhanced by camera movements that do not advance the primary action but present a different perspective of the scene (Sinnerbrink). In Blue Velvet, for instance, the scene at Ben’s house is full of tensions and emotions, and camera angles have Franck at the center, although the whole scene is centered on Dorothy. Such ambiguity creates a sense, a tone, and an atmosphere that the audience understands but cannot define or describe.
Unlike other films that use a coherent montage process, Lynch’s movies are always a work-in-progress until the very end. In motion pictures, montage is the processing of assembling and editing separate pieces of a film and creating a sequence that determines how a movie will end. In classical cinematography, the form of a film is pre-determined, and the audience can predict the conclusion of a movie based on the first scene’s content. In contrast, rather than pre-determining the end of his movies, Lynch allows form and context to evolve together through a process referred to as montage confusion. The application of montage confusion gives Lynch’s movies an organic feel that permits various organic parts to emerge, thus allowing the movie to ...