David Lynch continues to create some of the most challenging and polarizing films in all of cinema.  I find many people have a certain, peculiar reaction whenever one of his films is brought up in conversation.  A knowing smile sadistically creeps across the face.  Words flit around the lips, never really forming coherent sentences . . . "Yeah - - oh yeah!  David Lynch!  Uh-huh.  Mulholland Drive!  Eraserhead.  Blue Velvet!  Oh - - I've seen that!"   Stoner-like giggles all around.  Memories of fucked up scenes linger heavily in the air...

 

The terrifying face behind the dumpster, the Yellow Man covered in blood, the mysterious weirdo who is in your house...

 

Then the question finally arrives:  "Well, what did you think of it?"  Focused eyes instantly gloss over with a far away look, and answers rarely come back clearly defined.  Very few people, myself included, really know what to make of David Lynch.  But after seeing his latest, Inland Empire, I now have a theory. 

The thing about David Lynch is that he creates emotion.  Thats it - - simple as that.  Everything he does is for the pure intention of drawing out a very specific reaction from the audience.  And he is a master at it.  Its like a museum's surreal art collection running at 24 frames per second.  None of it makes sense.  You don't know WHY you're suddenly so absolutely horrified that your heart's in your asshole - - you just are, and its because that's the way Mr. Lynch painted that particular scene.  Its actually quite brilliant: David Lynch has gotten to the very core of our nature.  He's pushing our emotional buttons and our most basic, animal-like instincts have to kick in to respond.  Logic was thrown out the window by the time the opening titles hit the screen.  We have to meet his movies, not with our minds, but with our hearts and any glands responsible for the fluctuating of it's beating.

Some of Lynch's work is certainly more accessible than others - - the story of The Elephant Man is so beautifully poignant anyone and their mother can enjoy it, and Lynch even once made a sweet family film, The Straight Story for Walt Disney Pictures.  It's in films like these, you can appreciate his subtle ability to combine emotion with a coherent plot, yet it seems it's for the unadulterated and more challenging ones I feel a strangely deeper affinity.  There's something so unsettling about the Mary Poppins-like mechanical birds of Blue Velvet or the lady singing in the radiator in Eraserhead.  Inland Empire, available on DVD, is the height of it all.  A family outfitted with rabbit heads talking in non-sequiturs.  Laura Dern continually crying, and she doesn't know why.  Awkwardly long, drawn-out close ups of an old gypsy woman.  Chills up your spine and goosebumps down your arms.  For an interesting time, get a big group of people together and view Inland Empire - - or better yet, go it alone, all by yourself in the middle of the night...ooooh!

I admit I don't necessarily love his movies - - but I certainly love and admire the man. No one can forever ingrain into my psyche those rich, emotionally-charged images quite like David Lynch can.