Cinema and TV legend David Lynch is dead

Director David Lynch, the man behind “Lost Highway,” “Twin Peaks” and other classics, has died at the age of 78.

Few have shaped Hollywood cinema as much as David Lynch. His explorations of the horror that lurks beneath the bourgeois idyll, beneath the promises of America and modernity, his surreal aesthetics and experiments with the cinematic form have produced numerous classics. The filmmaker is now said to have died at the age of 78, as numerous media outlets unanimously reported on Thursday evening.

Previously appeared on Instagram a post from his family: “It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the death of the man and artist David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There is a big hole in the world since he is no longer with us. But as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not the hole.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies throughout.”

David Lynch, who was born in Montana in 1946, made his first feature film in the 1970s under lengthy, arduous and financially constrained conditions. Today “Eraserhead” is cult. The film is set in a dystopian, decaying industrial world where a man struggles with the burdens of fatherhood and a perpetually screaming, monstrous baby. The nightmarish black and white film marked the first major turning point in Lynch’s work, which later had its breakthrough with the historical drama “The Elephant Man”.

“Dune”, “Mulholland Drive” and Co. – The diverse work of David Lynch

Lynch’s attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s “Dune” novel, which was often perceived as a failure, is still legendary today. In the end, it became a battle between the artist and his producers, over which Lynch repeatedly expressed his anger and disappointment, including in his memoir “Dream worlds“. “The Desert Planet” had to be cut heavily and is probably the most controversial film of Lynch’s career. Incidentally, according to an interview with “Cahiers du Cinéma”, Lynch never wanted to watch the current “Dune” adaptation by Denis Villeneuve.

Whether it was “Blue Velvet”, “Mulholland Drive”, “Lost Highway” or the experimental three-hour film “Inland Empire”, his last feature film: Lynch loved the funny as well as the horrifying. His long and short films always evaded clearly defined genre conventions. They took up myths, ideologies and social fears, deconstructing both the (night) dream factory that is Hollywood and the supposedly tranquil, harmless life in American suburbia. Sex becomes violence, violence becomes sex, established categories dissolve. People suddenly transform into other shapes, feel persecuted, are sent on crazy trips that penetrate into the core of human nature and there embrace the paradox, the unconscious, the inexplicable.

The TV classic “Twin Peaks”

Lynch was not only a great of American cinema, but also as a painter, musician, actor, author, meditation expert and, most recently, even as YouTuber active. In recent years, Lynch appeared in front of the camera in a cameo appearance in Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical film “The Fablemans”. The universal artist also made television history with the series “Twin Peaks” about the murder of young Laura Palmer. Kyle MacLachlan slipped into his signature role as agent Dale Cooper. In this format, Lynch uniquely varied elements of the classic TV soap opera with his well-known love for genre cinema.

The late third season of “Twin Peaks: The Return” from 2017 (streaming at Wow) can be described as the director’s last great legacy. In 18 episodes, Lynch once again took his “Twin Peaks” universe down completely new paths, including a unique horror episode about the origins of evil, in which the myth of the atomic bomb, technical developments and metaphysically tinged digital gimmicks merged together. The director’s artistic traces can be found in many places in pop culture. Of all the great, canonized master directors of the last century and the turn of the millennium, Lynch is one of the most idiosyncratic and extraordinary.

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