Earlier this month,Varietyreported that David Lynch, one of the most revered filmmakers in the world, had shot and edited an entire movie in secret that was set to premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Unfortunately, the next day, just as Lynch’s fans started to foam at the mouth at the prospect of a new entry in his filmography arriving in a few short weeks, the director himself came forward to shrug off the Cannes report as “a total rumor.”Lynch toldEntertainment Weekly, “I have no new film coming out. That’s a total rumor. So, there you are. It is not happening. I don’t have a project. I have nothing at Cannes.” Despite the straightforwardness of this denial, some fans are taking Lynch’s comments with a pinch of salt. For months, Andrew Garfield dodged questions and denied rumors abouthis appearance inSpider-Man: No Way Homeand it turned out to be an elaborate marketing stunt designed to preserve the surprise. Lynch tends to shroud his projects in mystery and shooting a whole movie in secret whileposting daily weather reports on YouTubeas a cover would be very on-brand.RELATED:David Lynch: Every Movie Ranked By How Difficult They Are To FollowIf Lynch did have a secret movie coming out in a few weeks and it leaked to the press, it would make sense to dismiss it as a rumor the following day. It seems unlikely that Lynch was able to pull off a secret movie shoot – especiallyat the height of a global pandemic– but his fans haven’t given up hope yet. On the off chance that there’s a new David Lynch movie headed to Cannes in May, now is the perfect opportunity to catch up on the director’s best work.
Eraserhead Came Out Of The Gate With A Winner
Much like the Coens’Blood Simple,Quentin Tarantino’sReservoir Dogs, and Jordan Peele’sGet Out, Lynch’s directorial debut instantly established the defining idiosyncrasies of its director’s voice. A staple of the midnight movie circuit,Eraserheadintroduced audiences to all the hallmarks of Lynch’s filmmaking: ambiguous storytelling, a wall of ambient sound over each scene, a bizarre look at the industrialization of classic Americana. Above all,Eraserheadestablished Lynch’s penchant for adding a peculiar twist to make a familiar mundane situation terrify the audience as much as any slasher kill or ghostly haunting. When Henry Spencer meets his girlfriend’s parents for an awkward dinner, the turkey oozes a gooey sludge and the mother angrily berates him from across the table for having premarital sex with her daughter.
Lynch would go on to explorethe style that he established inEraserheadin a series of unsettling, dreamlike neo-noir epics.Lost Highwaysinks its hooks into the terror of isolation and the humanity behind film noir archetypes before switching protagonists at the midpoint.Mulholland Drive, Lynch’s odyssey through the dark side of Hollywood, has been dissected countless different ways. Is the whole movie a dream? Is Betty just Diane’s projection of a better life? Is the story about nostalgia versus the putrefaction of mainstream filmmaking? Like Stanley Kubrick’s seminal works, Lynch’s movies are jigsaw puzzles that can never quite be cracked. They’re collections of complex ideas expressed through mesmerizing sounds and images, and the experience of watching them gets richer and more engaging every time.
Not all of Lynch’s movies feel like lucid dreams draped in surreal visuals, ambient noise, and disturbing imagery. In fact, two of the three times that Lynch has stepped outside his comfort zone – sci-fi epicDuneand biopicsThe Elephant ManandThe Straight Story– resulted in two of his finest films. WhileDunewas panned by criticsand disowned by the director himself,The Elephant ManandThe Straight Storyare both beautifully sympathetic, humanist portraits of tragic real-life figures (a severely deformed man in 19th-century London and a man who drove across America on a lawn mower to visit his dying brother, respectively).
Blue Velvet Is Arguably Lynch’s Masterpiece
In 1986, Lynch bounced back from the failure ofDunewith arguably his greatest movie, and the one that best exemplifies his unique vision as a filmmaker. From its opening frames,Blue Velvetsets out to expose the ugliness hiding underneath the tranquil facade of the American suburbs. It’s anchored by a trio of the most memorable characters in the Lynch canon: Jeffrey, a brooding everyman; Dorothy, a tragic subversion of a femme fatale forced into a life of prostitution; andFrank, the sadistic pimp who took her family hostageand enslaved her.
The good-versus-evil ethics ofBlue Velvetare pretty straightforward in the first half of the movie – as Frank is rounded out as one of the most iconic (and horrifying) villains in movie history – but the story takes a particularly dark turn when Jeffrey begins to notice the qualities of Frank that he hates the most in his own behavior. In terms of its tone (part noir, part psycho-horror) and its unifying theme (everyone has a dark side),Blue Velvetis the quintessential David Lynch movie. Hopefully, this secret Cannes movie (rumored to star Laura Dern and Naomi Watts) turns out to be real – and hopefully, it’s so great that it topplesBlue Velvetas Lynch’s magnum opus.
