STACK #140 Jun 2016

DVD & BD FEATURE

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If you're an adventurous viewer who's eager to leave the comfort zone of generic Hollywood blockbusters, let STACK point you towards strange and exciting new frontiers in cinema – from the grindhouse to the arthouse and beyond. By Scott Hocking [Note: Some titles discussed may not be available on DVD and Blu-ray, so please check the JB Hi-Fi website.] BEGINNER’S GUIDE

#3 - DAVID LYNCH

probably be bidding Lynch farewell before you even get to know him properly. A better entry point is Blue Velvet (1986), the movie that pretty much introduced Lynch’s unique brand of moviemaking to a wide audience. The discovery of a severed ear plunges amateur sleuth Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) into a small town mystery involving a masochistic nightclub singer (Isabella Rossellini) and “a very dangerous man” in the form of the nitrous-sucking Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper in psycho overdrive). It’s a groundbreaking film for Lynch in that it introduces the seedy underbelly of America and the psychosexual milieu he would continue to explore in later films. Moreover, Blue Velvet features all of Lynch’s trademark themes and obsessions grafted to a

WhO is DAVID LYNCH? Painter, filmmaker and architect of the abstract and absurd, the surreal and nightmarish, this cult director’s baffling and brilliant visions defy the laws of traditional storytelling and polarise viewers. Considered to be one of the great auteurs of modern cinema, Lynch is best known for the films Blue Velvet , The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive , and the groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks .

DVD & BD

WHAT TO EXPECT Lynch’s work traverses the cinematic

them all, Lost Highway ’s impish ‘Mystery Man’, who can take a phone call from himself. His movies are full of mystifying motifs that may or may not be significant to the central mystery. Theatres, stages and stage microphones, and deformity are all recurring motifs in Lynch’s films, while heavy velvet drapes (usually red) and art deco design is essential to the aesthetic. Lynch’s films always concern something rotten lurking beneath the veneer of Americana, whether in a small town ( Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks ) or a big city ( Mulholland Drive ). His characters are a weird mob; some will experience an identity crisis so severe as to transform into entirely different characters during the course of the film, like Lost Highway ’s Fred/Pete and Mulholland Drive ’s Betty/Diane. And his villains transcend the profile of the average psycho. WHERE TO START Eraserhead (1976) is Lynch’s first film. It’s also his strangest and most inaccessible, so if you plan to start from the very beginning, you’ll

spectrum – gothic, noir, horror, farce, mystery- thriller, surrealism and eroticism. His films are distinguished by a potent marriage of sound and image, and a digression from traditional storytelling. That’s really a polite way of saying they don’t make a lot of sense. And yet they do – Lynch’s movies may not follow logic as we know it, but they always obey the rules of their own bizarre world/premise. What’s baffling in a conventional sense can be perfectly cogent within the Lynchian universe. “It's better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you'll be too afraid to let things keep happening,” is the director’s philosophy. Lynch’s films frequently feature omniscient puppetmasters; mystery men who are in some way pivotal to the plot and the fate of the characters, while remaining on the periphery. Eraserhead ’s scarred ‘Man in the Planet’; Twin Peaks ’ dancing dwarf, aka ‘The Man from Another Place’; Mulholland Drive ’s creepy tramp behind Winkies; and the most sinister of

traditional thriller narrative – this one does actually make sense. “It’s a strange world” notes Blue Velvet ’s protagonist, and things are about to get a whole lot stranger. Wild at Heart (1990) is Lynch at his most playful – a raucous road trip with lashings of ultra-violence and absurdity. It’s also the

director’s homage to The Wizard of Oz , complete with an appearance by the Good Witch. Seriously. Made back in the days when Nicolas Cage was a good actor, Wild at Heart features one of his best performances as fugitive Sailor Ripley, who channels the spirit of Elvis in a snakeskin jacket. A demented Diane Ladd and a sleazy Willem Dafoe, as the dentally-challenged villain, provide further incentive to check this one out.

JUNE 2016

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