The film Lynch, a portrait of filmmaker David Lynch, is described in the Rotterdam film festival catalog as “a documentary sketch about a period of two years, made around the production of his last film, Island Empire.” The film also has an air of mystery. Its creator and editor are credited as: blackANDwhite, nobody knows who is responsible for the film and some wonder if Lynch himself made it. Whatever its provenance, Lynch is an inspiring, thought- provoking, and entertaining film for people interested in the process of creativity and discussions of consciousness. I like the idea of this documentary as making a contribution to a dialogue of ideas, and doesn’t concern itself with achieving the perfection of its form.
The film is shot in a casual DV-style. We are given some great access to Lynch in his workspace as he engaged in the activities of a working artist who enjoys creating and destroying a visual landscape that emerges straight from his imagination. Though we witness plenty of Lynch's interactions with cast and crew, the camera usually focuses on the director's face, and rarely on the other people. I have to wonder if this was a creative choice—to show the artist’s self obsession—or was it a question of avoiding the need to obtain releases fro everyone, which would possibly cause interference in the production environment? This choice is one of the aspects that makes the film feel like a rough sketch—as opposed to a refined documentary story—and I am glad that Lynch allows space for all the loose ends.
A good part of the film is comprised of tripod interviews, shot at odd angles, in which we are entertained and enlightened by Lynch’s philosophies. Towards the beginning of the film we see a very strange shot of Lynch, shot from below his desk looking up as he speaks on the phone and smokes cigarettes. He tells an unidentified person on the phone:
“Today I’ve been meditating for 32 years. I’ve never missed a meditation, it's my anniversary. I practice Transcendental Meditiation. It’s a personal thing, but I really think for every person it would be so good, but for artists, it’s a chance to dive into pure creativity. Pure creativity lives in the unified field, absolute pure being, it's an ocean of creativity, and it would be good I think for people to visit that, and infuse that. There’s other qualities to the absolute pure being: bliss, intelligence, consciousness, universal love, peace, power, and energy! And, to me it's money in the bank. And I love my meditation, and I don’t want to not do it. I love doing it!”
Lynch’s reflections on meditation are dynamic and give insight into his process. But it seems that after hearing his thoughts on peace, love, and bliss we are confronted with images of a different Lynch, the one who curses at his staff, who smokes endlessly, who seems irritable and stressed. He also appears very alienated in the film—he is rarely seen expressing warmth towards his collaborators with the exception of Laura Dern. His irritability seems to be an easy conflict to create tension in the film—the tension of a unified being grappling with the realities of creative collaboration and the responsibilities of the director.
As Lynch works on a project of building small figurines he continues to share his observation on the creative life:
“I never really knew that it was possible to be an artist in the modern world. I just never figured that you could do that. Forget being the best of anything, that’s the fruit of the action. And you do the work, they say, for the doing, not the fruit. You can never really know how it’s going to turn out in the world, but you know if you enjoy doing it. And ideas start flowing and you start getting excited about stuff. Then you are having a great time in the doing, and that’s what its all about. If you don’t enjoy the doing, then do something else.”
He continues:
“There was a thought for a long time that you had to suffer in order to create. And this is just about opposite of the truth. If you are suffering—even a little bit of suffering—cuts into your creativity. In fact, the happier you are, and the more wide awake and rested you are, the better it goes. And it should be fun! So you are having fun, you are wide awake, and you got a happiness bug going, then the ideas can flow way better, way smoother and faster and more of them.”
In one unforgettable scene in the film, Lynch gives a staff member a meditation-oriented task. He tells the person to “meditate as usual” and then write down names of actors for a specific kind of character description. He then asked the person to “present the names to him the next day on their power walk.”
Another fascinating scene involves a phone conversation Lynch has with an unidentified staff member. The filmmaker is highly disappointed because this person hasn’t fulfilled an obligation, and is unavailable by phone. After speaking honestly of his frustration Lynch seems stuck on one of life’s greatest contradictions: How do we stay focused on our own visions when those around us don’t live up to our expectations? Lynch seems to have developed great skills for confronting his own frustrations, and is much more peaceful in his exchange with his crew than others may be, but the dilemma still exists.
Lynch has created an organization called the Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace that takes its philosophical cues from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation. He is collaborating with John Hagelin, a quantum physicist and sometime political campaigner, to bring Transcendental Meditation Practices into schools, especially those where students are challenged by violent and chaotic environments.
I don’t think Lynch would like it that I was watching the documentary as a pixilated file on a streaming server, or that I was simultaneously checking my email and Facebook page. He might, however, find some delight in the synchronicity that as I checked my Facebok page my friend Claudia posted on her Wall a YouTube clip [1] of Lynch slamming the iPhone as a platform for watching cimema.
I wonder what kind of distribution this film will enjoy, and I also wonder what Lynch himself thinks of it. It was an entertaining and engaging portrait of a creative powerhouse of our time. It also brought to mind the documentary Lost in La Mancha about Terry Gilliam’s failed attempt at making his Don Quixote Johnny Depp movie. That film worked because of the conflict created when another film failed to happen. Perhaps documentaries about creative process are not strong narratives if there is no terrible conflict? This leads me to my big current question: What is the role of central conflict theory in documentary storytelling? Why do we, as audiences, want our representations of actuality to follow Aristotle’s story conventions when life simply doesn’t go that way?