I first cottoned to the work of David Lynch through his Blue Velvet, just a little before Twin Peaks became a sensation. I even have a weird association with his Eraserhead, as I accidentally burned microwave popcorn the first time I saw it, so I now smell that if I so much as think about the film. But my appreciation wobbled with Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and I still think Lost Highway was a massive misfire. I even saw Mulholland Drive when critics initially ravaged it, before all of them seemed to simultaneously walk back those assessments. As for myself, I’m still lost as to why that picture is so incredibly popular.
The 2022 film Lynch/Oz opens with Jason Stoval riffing on the emcee’s shtick at the Club Silencio from that film. This brief tribute is amateurish and unconvincing, but mercifully short.
Fortunately, he doesn’t introduce any of the segments that comprise this documentary. Each of these chapters has a different personality providing the narration for each. I’m not clear on how much each of these presenters wrote for this film, but John Waters has the typically brilliant anecdotes one would expect for his piece. I was also pleased to hear Karyn Kusama, director of Jennifer’s Body and The Invitation, helm a chapter.
Largely, the focus of these segments is on the associations between Lynch’s work and The Wizard of Oz. Frankly, the influence of that film so overwhelmingly colors his oeuvre as to make it redundant to point out the references. Just off the top of my head, there’s the use of curtains (though, admittedly, I can’t recall a green one in any of his work), little people and doppelgangers. His Wild at Heart makes at least a dozen direct call-outs to the legendary film.
God bless our lenient fair use copyright regulations, as this documentary seems to show what feels like at least half of Oz, though in tiny fragments that are shown out of order. Fortunately, there are more references explored here than the ones to that particular movie, so we also get clips from, and comparisons to, such works as Back to the Future, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Red Shoes, Babe, Beverly Hills Cop, Eyes Wide Shut, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Big Lebowski . Largely, this film seems to find strong parallels to any movie where somebody goes on a journey where they are a fish out of water.
Often, the images are a bit too on the nose. In the first essay, Wind, Amy Nicholson talks about Lynch not letting the audience see the gears and levers that are the machinery of his film work, while we see on the screen bits from a couple of Lynch’s works showing people working literal gears and levels. Actually, it is a bit unfair of me to single that out, as she has many other, deeper insights.
In the second chapter, Rodney Ascher points out how easy it is to find parallels between almost any two things, which I had already been snarkily considering. This segment also addresses one thing I had never considered, which is how both Oz and Lynch’s work have long double exposures.
It is no surprise the best part of the film is the third segment, which is Waters’s. I was surprised he is unironically a huge fan of Oz, which he says is still his favorite film. He talks about how Oz made him want to take LSD. Since it was one of the first movies he saw as a kid, I’m assuming he didn’t get that inspiration on the first visit.
My second-most favorite chapter was next, and that is Katsuma’s. Without providing additional details, she talks about the pain she felt when the director character in Mullholland Drive acquiesces to the casting mandate from the producers. She also said something I’m chewing on and that is “the courage of the characters to keep opening doors they shouldn’t be opening”. Then there’s the connection she sees between Lynch’s many women in trouble, and whether he might be channeling the wreckage of Garland’s real life through such stories.
Lynch/Oz is an interesting exercise, but with as many trenchant insights as it has “well, duh” observations of the most superficial nature. For better or worse, it isn’t batshit crazy like the documentary Rodney Ascher, one of our presenters here, was responsible for: a laughably bad autopsy of The Shining, that being the conspiracy-theory-heavy Room 237.
Dir: Alexandre O. Philippe
Documentary
Watched on Kanopy