DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE (Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes 2016)

[Chris Knipp]

PREVIEW: I'LL REVIEW THIS SHORTLY. IT'S GREAT!





J A N U S ... F I L M S

presents

DAVID LYNCH:
THE ART LIFE

An intimate portrait of the artist, revealing the master filmmaker's inner world and creative development

Opening at New York's IFC Center March 31st
and at Los Angeles' Cinefamily on April 14th

Q&As with director Jon Nguyen to follow the 7:15 screenings at IFC Center on Friday, March 31st and Saturday, April 1st!

"Lynch narrates his life more thoroughly, poignantly and evocatively than I've ever heard from him before."
- Nick James, Sight & Sound

"Insightful and absorbing."
- Tom Huddleston, Time Out London

"An essential creative autobiography for all Lynch fans."
- Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter

OFFICIAL SELECTION:
SXSW - DOC NYC- Venice Film Festival - London Film Festival

Janus Films presents DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE, an intimate journey through the formative years of the director and painter's life, from his idyllic upbringing in small-town America to the dark, industrial streets of Philadelphia. The film traces the events that have helped to shape one of cinema's most enigmatic artists. Directed by Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes and Olivia Neergaard-Holm, DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE opens in New York at the IFC Center March 31st, and in Los Angles on April 14th at the Cinefamily, followed by a national rollout.

In advance of the release of DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE, IFC Center will present a comprehensive retrospective of Lynch's films, including a new 4K restoration of his groundbreaking feature debut, ERASERHEAD, landmark works like WILD AT HEART, MULHOLLAND DR., and INLAND EMPIRE, rare shorts and more, March 24th-April 6th.

"I think every time you do something, like a painting or whatever, you go with ideas and sometimes the past can conjure those ideas and color them, even if they're new ideas, the past colors them." - David Lynch

DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE is infused with Lynch's own art, music and early films, shining a light into the dark corners of his unique world, and giving audiences a better understanding of the man and the artist. We're invited into and given a private viewing of Lynch's compound and painting studio in the hills high above Hollywood, as he retells personal stories from his past that unfold like scenes from his films. Strange characters come into focus, only to fade again into the past, leaving an indelible mark on Lynch, the artist.

We become witness to the fears, misunderstandings and struggles that Lynch overcomes, and along the way meet the various people that have helped to mold him. It became evident early in Lynch's life that he views the world differently, absorbing its shadows and weaving a dream-like tapestry for audiences worldwide to become tangled in.

This film is dedicated to Lynch's youngest daughter and serves as a personal memoir from father to daughter. By pulling back the curtains on an icon the film hopes to uncover the individual: David Lynch.

USA - Denmark | 2016 | 93 minutes | Color | In English | Screening format: DCP

[Johann]

PREVIEW: I'LL REVIEW THIS SHORTLY. IT'S GREAT!

DAVID LYNCH:
THE ART LIFE

An intimate portrait of the artist, revealing the master filmmaker's inner world and creative development

"I think every time you do something, like a painting or whatever, you go with ideas and sometimes the past can conjure those ideas and color them, even if they're new ideas, the past colors them." - David Lynch

I love that quote. If you love cinema, then David Lynch has surprises for you...
This should be worth seeing. I love that photo of him too Chris. Very nice.
The Criterion edition of Eraserhead has plenty of autobiographical stuff included, interviews and such, and of course his amazing short films.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks for mentioning that - I'll have to get a look at the Criterion edition of Eraserhead. You will like David Lynch: The Art Life.

[Chris Knipp]

JON NGUYEN, RICK BARNES: DAVID LYNCH - THE ART LIFE (2016)



How David Lynch became David Lynch (as if he wasn't always)

This movie's title tells us what it's about: not David Lynch the famous filmmaker, but an artist called David Lynch, an all-around creative person whose early life was pointed toward being a painter - and who's a painter today. This is his film, his narration about his life, and it's consciously done as a memoir for his youngest daughter, little toddler Lula, briefly glimpsed here - something for her to enjoy at some future time. And so he reminisces, and we listen, watching him not talking but working in his art studio at home in the Hollywood Hills - with rich archival material cunningly interpolated by the filmmakers, as needed, along the way to illustrate the key early years he recounts here leading up to just beyond the time when Eraserhead was first seen by an astonished public. This is the engaging and by appearances unguarded self-portrait of a man who appears by the sound of it, implausible as that may seem, to have become only incidentally one of the great American cinematic auteurs of the last half century. The art pieces and the messy working on them isn't always that interesting; it's more a way of relaxing us, as we listen to the story.

It began with a happy childhood. He was born in Missoula, Montana, but soon thereafter his parents got a house in Sand Point, Idaho. After two years, they moved to Spokane, Washington. Snapshots and Lynch's account show these times to be idyllic, including when he was two, playing with his little friend in a mud puddle built by his father to be cool in summer. Children played freely in the blocks around as kids did in America in the Fifties.

How did he come to make movies full of frightening mystery and menace? Not from his early years - or from the sunny nature interviews always reveal. Though in the past he's often said decades of practicing Transcendental Meditation brought him inner calm, it seems his early life had conditioned him to be a happy person to begin with. But a move to Virginia when he was a teenager caused Lynch to rebel and run with a "bad crowd" in high school. And later in this film, he speaks of living in a bad, nasty neighborhood in Philadelphia, which seems to have introduced him to a profound sense of horror and dread. Even when he was a little boy he has a vivid memory of a "giant" naked woman appearing out on the lawn with a bloodied mouth and the sense of the nightmarish was formed.

Lynch's early life, marked by an utter detestation of school, focused on entering a painting studio, which he did seriously while in high school, and then going on to art school. It took a while to find the right one, but when he did, there was comradeship and productivity. First, his friend Toby Keeler led him to permission to work in the studio of his father Bushnell Keeler, a painter - and focused Lynch's desire intensely in that direction thenceforth.*

This story shows so clearly how Lynch is artist first and filmmaker second, it helps explain why there's been no feature film from his hand since 2006's Inland Empire but that he would not see that as a problem, a dry period. A look at IMDb will show moreover that since 2006 Lynch hasn't abandoned movie-making. He's kept up a constant stream of short films recording his various artistic and cinematic explorations ever since as well. We've heard of his various projects including websites (one of which, called Projects, extensively lists schemes not yet completed); plus music; the painting illustrated here; and enterprises like David Lynch Organic Coffee (the beans come sealed in a can).

But none of that stuff has a place in the voiceover here because it hadn't happened yet. We're deep into the young man's determined efforts to live, as the title says, the art life. Writers more informed than I, like Nick James ofSight & Sound (BFI) confirm that this movie shows Lynch narrating his life "more thoroughly, poignantly, and evocatively" than he's "ever heard from him before."

It certainly works for me. It reminded me of when I was eighteen, and spent a year in Baltimore as a kind of apprentice-student-surrogate son of the artist Karl Metzler and at lunch every day he'd revel in telling me stories of his life and how he became a painter and sculptor. Karl was a mesmerizing storyteller and so is Lynch. The fact that Lynch is more than a movie director makes him, for me, more of a kindred spirit and that makes this film a unique pleasure to watch. But apart from my very real personal pleasure, this is clearly enough an essential portrait for all fans and students of David Lynch.

David Lynch - The Art Life, Janus Films, 93 mins., debuted at Venice. Sept. 2016; 14 festival showings listed on IMDb include London, SxSW, and DOCNYC; US theatrical release beginning at IFC Center 31 Mar. 2017. Q&As with director Jon Nguyen to follow the 7:15 screenings at IFC Center on Friday, March 31st and Saturday, April 1st. At Los Angeles' Cinefamily 14 Apr., then wider release. Release of the film is being accompanied by an IFC retrospective including a 4K restoration of Eraserhead plus key works, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, and rare shorts, running from 24 Mar. to 6 Apr. Screened for this review at Criterion Collection, 215 Park Avenue South, NYC 22 Feb. 2017.
______
*Lynch's first film was of "Sailing with Bushnell Keeler."

[Johann]

Excellent Chris.
Sounds fabulous.
I do not lament him not making anything since Inland Empire.
Like Kubrick, he can take as long as he wants.
His films are an acquired taste. Also like Kubrick, he turned terror into art.
That is off-putting to some.
It's as if Weegee became an auteur. Haha

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks. And thanks to Bingham Bryant for inviting me to the original Janus Films/Criterion screening. Of all the films I saw in NYC my last sojourn there - seems like maybe around 60 - this is the one that gave me the most personal pleasure.

Just a token of the real thing and a mere hint of my pleasure in it. The film is filled with amazing images, clips, and animations by Lynch we've never seen. Nguyen & co. have done a film about Lynch before, about the making of Inland Empire. This is a work of art, visuals, art, sound, made over a three-year period - yet it's unpretentious and never gets in the way of the main thing, which is Lynch's storytelling about his early life.

There is a link with Kubrick - as you note - the intense originality (also perhaps a hermetic quality and an agoraphobia?) and the special personal sense of time toward their work.

[Johann]

Interesting.
You don't strike me as a Lynch fan.
Must be the artist sensibility.
Time will be very good to David Lynch.
Bank on it.

[Chris Knipp]

Oh I'm a Lynch fan, but my response to this film is tied to the artist identification as noted in the last paragraph of my review (not counting the release data one). I am not an expert. But we watched "Twin Peaks" at home with my parents, and I went to see his movies. One thing that made me a greater convert was Inland Empire in the 2006 NYFF. See my review here. If I were in NYC right now (which I'm not) I'd be living at IFC Center for a few days watching the Lynch retrospective and seeing the director talk about The Art Life.

[Chris Knipp]

Our original exchange about Inland Empire and the Q&A is here.

[Johann]

Inland Empire is something else.

David Lynch either moves you or he doesn't.
His last film sent me to the moon...
What does a man have to do?

[Chris Knipp]

Lynch has provided cinephiles plenty to chew over forever.

[Chris Knipp]

Good news for cinephiles and David Lynch fans.
DAVID LYNCH:
THE ART LIFE

An intimate portrait of the artist, revealing the inner world
and creative development of the master filmmaker

Now available for digital rental and purchase exclusively on iTunes - just in time for the return of Lynch's revolutionary
TWIN PEAKS, screening May 25 at the Cannes Film Festival!

publicity release received Wed., May 24, 2017.