David Lynch, Surrealistic Filmmaker, Has Died Aged 78
Known for his nightmarish visions of an American mythology, the director inspired a generation of filmmakers with his dreamlike, eccentric and painterly style
Known for his nightmarish visions of an American mythology, the director inspired a generation of filmmakers with his dreamlike, eccentric and painterly style

David Lynch – the filmmaker behind works such as Blue Velvet (1986), Twin Peaks (1990–91, 2017) and Mulholland Drive (2001) – has died aged 78.
Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana, in 1946. Interested in drawing and painting from a young age, he enrolled in several art schools before attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Shortly after, he married and had a daughter. In a series of interviews, Lynch on Lynch (2006), he describes the city at that time as being ‘full of fear’, adding that it would become ‘the biggest influence in my whole life’.
Lynch’s early films were shorts experimenting with animation and featured the violence and dreamlike qualities that would come to define his later work. In 1970, he made the live-action short The Grandmother (1970) about a young boy who creates his own grandmother, after receiving a grant from the American Film Institute (AFI). That same year, he moved to Los Angeles, where he would be based for the rest of his life, and enrolled in the AFI Conservatory.
His first feature, Eraserhead (1977), a nightmarish and painterly black-and-white film about a man tasked with raising his girlfriend’s larvae-like offspring, baffled critics and repulsed audiences but nevertheless caught the attention of the likes of Mel Brooks and Stanley Kubrick. The former would produce his follow-up, The Elephant Man (1980), which found greater success and led to Lynch’s collaboration with producer Dino de Laurentiis, who asked Lynch to direct an adaptation (1984) of Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965). Having not had full creative control over it, the director distanced himself from Dune, but, under contractual obligation, worked again with de Laurentiis on Blue Velvet, which would make Lynch a household name.
Set in an American suburb, Blue Velvet follows college student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), who, after finding a severed ear in a field, discovers – along with his friend Sandy (Laura Dern) – a criminal gang and their violent workings. The film’s surrealism, allusions to mid-century American pop culture, and attention to the dark underpinnings of a polished, conservative American image would all become trademarks of Lynch’s unique artistic vision.
Lynch’s next project, Twin Peaks, a mystery TV series co-created with Mark Frost, saw the director working with a commercial network. Set in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, the show follows FBI Agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan) as he investigates the murder of local teenager Laura Palmer, and, in doing so, uncovers the criminal and supernatural underworlds interwoven into the daily lives of the town’s residents. The series, initially cancelled after two seasons, was followed by a feature-length prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), and an 18-part series, Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), the latter being Lynch’s final production. The same year Twin Peaks premiered, Lynch won the Palme d'Or for his romantic crime film Wild at Heart, cementing his status as a major auteur.
In 2001, Lynch released what is considered by many to be his masterpiece, Mulholland Drive. Moving away from small-town USA, the neo-noir film follows an aspiring actress, Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), pursuing a career in Hollywood, only to become entangled in the business and corruption of the industry. A scathing critique of cinema’s self-mythologizing, Mulholland Drive was presented as a contemporary version of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966), using juxtaposition, doubleness and unreliable characters to distort both traditional narrative and the more superficial aspects of image-making.
For his follow-up and final feature film, Inland Empire (2006), Lynch served not only as director but also writer, cinematographer and editor, bringing back many regular actors like Dern, Justin Theroux and Harry Dean Stanton. After being described by critics as having abandoned his experimental roots, Lynch produced one of his most ambitious and challenging films, tagged ‘a woman in trouble’. Shot over a long period of time, using inexpensive equipment, Inland Empire is a mysterious thriller that defies description (Lynch himself wrote that ‘words are the movie’s enemy’) yet has been the subject of continued critical analysis and praise, serving as the subject of a 2021 monograph by Melissa Anderson.
Lynch spent the following decade mostly away from Hollywood, shooting music videos, composing music and returning to his early passion for the visual arts. In 2007, he was the subject of a retrospective at Fondation Cartier, where films, drawings, paintings, photographs and sound works were exhibited alongside one another. This was followed by a 2014 exhibition at his alma mater. He was represented by Pace and Sperone Westwater.
In 2017, he returned to Twin Peaks, set 25 years after the original series and following the lives of many of the characters. This masterwork is a fitting swan song for the director, a capacious enough work to encompass the many obsessions and anxieties that haunt his oeuvre, all done in his characteristically confounding and inimitable manner. It was named the best ‘film’ of the decade by the influential film journal Cahiers du Cinéma.
A longtime practitioner of transcendental meditation, Lynch spoke to frieze editor-in-chief Andrew Durbin in 2018 about the potential it brings to art-making: ‘When I started transcending, I started enjoying life more. Negativity is the enemy of creativity. When you start expanding consciousness, you can catch ideas on a deeper level.’
Main image: David Lynch, 2005. Courtesy: Getty Images; photograph: Hector Mata