\n<\/p>\n
David Lynch<\/a>, whose death, at 78, was announced on Thursday, was one of the most distinctive voices in modern cinema. His work defied easy categorization other than to say it was his own. Hence, the descriptor \u201cLynchian.\u201d He created his own iconography both onscreen and off. (The man loved cigarettes and milkshakes.) His movies, as well as his beloved television series \u201cTwin Peaks,\u201d are full of mysteries that he resisted explaining. To love Lynch is to try to decipher the \u201cEraserhead\u201d lady in the radiator and the log lady from \u201cTwin Peaks.\u201d Here\u2019s how to dive into his world on streaming. (Note that \u201cWild at Heart\u201d and \u201cThe Elephant Man\u201d are not currently available.)<\/p>\n 1977<\/p>\n Stream it on Max<\/a> and the Criterion Channel<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Where were you when you first heard of the \u201cEraserhead\u201d<\/a> baby? For anyone who loves cinema the word of the baby arrives before you\u2019ve even seen Lynch\u2019s first film, his black-and-white opus about a man named Henry with sky-high hair existing in a terrifying industrial landscape where everything creaks with eerie sounds. The baby becomes an emblem of what Lynch can do: create images that live in your mind and burrow under your skin. Shot over several years in the early 1970s<\/a> \u2014 the number varies from account to account \u2014 \u201cEraserhead\u201d stars Lynch\u2019s longtime collaborator Jack Nance as the nervous Henry, who is told a baby at the hospital is his. Just what that baby looks like must be seen to be believed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Lynch once said in an interview<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019m proud of everything except \u2018Dune,\u2019\u201d his 1984 adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel. While Lynch\u2019s version has its fans \u2014 and arguably is not as bad as he thought it was \u2014 it found him struggling to work within the Hollywood machine. (He had previously received acclaim and Oscar nominations for \u201cThe Elephant Man\u201d in 1980, which was produced by Mel Brooks, a strange and wonderful union of talents.) In \u201cDune,\u201d which stars Kyle \u200b\u200bMacLachlan as Paul Atreides, you can see the director\u2019s instincts to dig into the strangeness of Herbert\u2019s work strain against the studio desire to create a blockbuster that would appeal to the masses. He didn\u2019t get final cut, which plagued him for years. He later said<\/a>, \u201cWhy would anyone work for three years on something that wasn\u2019t yours? Why? Why do that? Why? I died a death. And it was all my fault for not knowing to put that in the contract.\u201d<\/p>\n 1986<\/p>\n Stream it on Max<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n If there\u2019s one positive from \u201cDune\u201d it was the director\u2019s collaboration with MacLachlan, who would go on to star in the thoroughly Lynchian \u201cBlue Velvet<\/a>,\u201d a tale of the disturbing world lurking under small-town life, a theme that would resonate with Lynch again and again. MacLachlan plays Jeffrey Beaumont, who stumbles upon a severed ear when he comes home from college. (That ear, crawling with ants, is one of Lynch\u2019s most indelible images in a career full of them.) The discovery leads Jeffrey, who has a peeping-tom nature, to the innocent Sandy (Laura Dern, another one of Lynch\u2019s regular players), the singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), and the violent Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). In an interview with The Times, Lynch tried to describe how the ear was the impetus for the story<\/a>, \u201cI don\u2019t know why it had to be an ear. Except it needed to be an opening of a part of the body \u2014 a hole into something else, like a ticket to another world. The ear sits on the head and goes right into the mind so it felt perfect. Maybe a psychiatrist would have something to say about that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Those who weren\u2019t cinephiles were probably introduced to David Lynch through the world of \u201cTwin Peaks<\/a>.\u201d In what these days amounts to a bizarre turn of events, suddenly an avant-garde filmmaker became the creator of a popular network television series when it debuted in 1990 on ABC. Cocreated by Mark Frost, the show opens with the discovery of the corpse of teen queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), her visage blue and her body wrapped in plastic. Ostensibly, \u201cTwin Peaks\u201d is a murder mystery. Soon enough MacLachlan\u2019s chipper F.B.I. agent Dale Cooper arrives, marveling at the local coffee and pie. But what Cooper finds is no simple case. Rather it\u2019s a question of human rot and literal evil in the form of the nightmarish entity Bob (Frank Silva). After a second season that many fans found disappointing, \u201cTwin Peaks\u201d was canceled. It concluded on one of the most famous cliffhangers of all time, but that would crucially not be the end of \u201cTwin Peaks.\u201d<\/p>\n 1992<\/p>\n Stream it on Max<\/a> or the Criterion Channel<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Following the cancellation of \u201cTwin Peaks,\u201d Lynch could not let Laura Palmer remain dead. Instead, he revived her in the film \u201cTwin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,\u201d largely an account of the last weeks of Laura\u2019s life. Extremely dark, the film was largely dismissed by critics upon its release, but is now revered, especially as the mythology of \u201cTwin Peaks\u201d expanded. Lynch always maintained his affection for \u201cFire Walk With Me,\u201d telling The Guardian<\/a>, \u201cI loved the film and when you do something you believe in and it doesn\u2019t go well, it\u2019s OK. If you sell out like I did on \u2018Dune\u2019 and it doesn\u2019t go well, then you really die.\u201d<\/p>\n 1997<\/p>\n Stream it on the Criterion Channel<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The phrase Lynch used to describe \u201cLost Highway<\/a>\u201d was \u201cpsychogenic fugue.\u201d It was a term he actually stole from the unit publicist, who was researching mental illness. \u201cThe person suffering from it creates in their mind a completely new identity, new friends, new home, new everything \u2014 they forget their past identity,\u201d he told Filmmaker magazine<\/a>. \u201cThis has reverberations with \u2018Lost Highway,\u2019 and it\u2019s also a music term.\u201d Music is relevant because the film follows a saxophonist, Fred, played by Bill Pullman. In the first unnerving plot mechanism that Lynch throws in Fred\u2019s path, a series of videotapes show up outside the home he shares with his wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette in a Bettie Page wig). Soon he\u2019s greeted at a party by an unnamed man, his face painted white (Robert Blake). \u201cLost Highway\u201d is a physically dark film, without the twinkle that Lynch would give to his later depictions of Los Angeles in \u201cMulholland Drive.\u201d<\/p>\n 1999<\/p>\n Stream it on Disney+<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe Straight Story<\/a>\u201d is arguably the most un-Lynchian David Lynch film, and yet it is still a quietly beautiful reflection of his artistic sensibilities. This drama, released by Disney of all studios, is based on the true story of Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), a 73-year-old Iowan who rides his lawn mower more than 200 miles to see his ailing brother. There\u2019s an inherent quirk to the notion of a man committed to this mode of transportation, but Lynch portrays the journey with complete earnestness. For as much as the director loved to delve into the seedy side of American society, \u201cThe Straight Story\u201d is about the sense of community Alvin finds on the road and the small graces extended to him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n If there\u2019s one Lynch project that\u2019s most frequently considered his masterpiece it\u2019s \u201cMulholland Drive<\/a>,\u201d which was named the best film of the 21st century in a 2016 BBC poll of critics<\/a>. \u201cMulholland Drive\u201d is his interpretation of Hollywood, a world he admires and fears at the same time. There\u2019s a simple way to explain \u201cMulholland Drive,\u201d beginning with the story of Betty (Naomi Watts, in her breakout role), a cheery young woman who arrives in Los Angeles with dreams of stardom. At the apartment where she has planned to stay, Betty encounters Rita (Laura Harring), who has no memory of who she is. Together, they hunt for Rita\u2019s true identity. It\u2019s a search that eventually bleeds into the story of another woman, Diane Selwyn, also played by Watts. But just describing what happens in \u201cMulholland Drive\u201d feels almost too glib. Lynch scholars and obsessives have spent decades trying to unpack the sensations it evokes as it makes you question what is a dream and what is reality.<\/p>\n 2006<\/p>\n Stream it on Max<\/a> and the Criterion Channel<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Often Lynch is hard to explain. That\u2019s the thing with his movies. But perhaps none are more difficult to illuminate than \u201cInland Empire<\/a>,\u201d starring his frequent muse Laura Dern as an actress named Nikki Grace. In fact, production began as an experiment between Dern and Lynch, a monologue for her that he thought he would post on his website<\/a>. It evolved over three years of sporadic filming<\/a>. \u201cInland Empire\u201d is particularly notable in the Lynch canon as the first movie he shot on digital video rather than celluloid, a choice that revolted some audiences. But Lynch was resolute. When he finally received production money, he told the film company two things: \u201cI don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing, and I\u2019m shooting on D.V.\u201d There are also rabbits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As anomalous as it was that \u201cTwin Peaks\u201d existed in the first place, it was equally miraculous that it was revived in the form of \u201cTwin Peaks: The Return,\u201d which aired more than 25 years later on Showtime. Yes, reboots of classic television shows were all the rage when the network gave Lynch the green light after much negotiation, but the director was not going to make the third season everybody expected. In fact, \u201cThe Return\u201d offers very little resolution to the saga of Laura Palmer and Dale Cooper, introducing entirely new characters and presenting a vision of the Washington state setting that was nearly unrecognizable. Cooper, most troublingly, is not himself, his body used by a doppelg\u00e4nger as an engine for evil. Later, he takes the form of the goofy, empty-headed Dougie Jones. \u201cThe Return\u201d would be the last full-length work Lynch created, and it ends on the sight of Laura Palmer, or a version of Laura Palmer, screaming into the night. It\u2019s a disturbing final statement from an unparalleled artist.<\/p>\n 2020<\/p>\n Stream it on Netflix<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In early 2020 a new David Lynch short suddenly appeared on Netflix. It had premiered at earlier film festivals, but most viewers had no idea what to expect. What did they get? About 15 minutes of Lynch playing a detective interrogating a monkey. It\u2019s a reminder for as much as Lynch\u2019s work could plumb the depths of the human psyche, he also had a real sense of play.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Steven Spielberg gave Lynch a fitting onscreen send-off by casting him as another legendary director, John Ford, in the semi-autobiographical film \u201cThe Fabelmans<\/a>.\u201d Lynch, puffing on a cigar, plays the man who made \u201cThe Searchers\u201d with cantankerous verve. Near the end of the film Spielberg\u2019s stand-in, Sammy Fabelman gets an audience with Lynch\u2019s Ford. \u201cThey tell me you want to be a picture maker,\u201d Lynch as Ford says. \u201cWhy? This business, it\u2019ll rip you apart.\u201d He then gives Sammy some genius advice and tells him to get out of his office. It\u2019s three all-time greats in conversation with one another: Spielberg, Ford and Lynch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u2018Eraserhead\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Blue Velvet\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Lost Highway\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018The Straight Story\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Inland Empire\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018What Did Jack Do?\u2019<\/h2>\n