Lost Highways & Wild Hearts:
The Films of David Lynch
From July 7 through August 1, the Gene Siskel Film Center presents Lost Highways & Wild Hearts: The Films of David Lynch, a retrospective of America’s favorite surrealist filmmaker spanning his feature films from THE ELEPHANT MAN to his most recent INLAND EMPIRE. (Lynch’s first feature ERASERHEAD, available only on DVD, is not included.)
After attending art school in Boston during the late 1960s, Lynch received a grant from the American Film Institute to make THE GRANDMOTHER, a nightmarish short film that established Lynch’s signature style and imagery. His groundbreaking first feature ERASERHEAD. begun in 1971 but not completed until 1977 due to budgetary constraints, became an underground hit and put Lynch on the map.
Producer Mel Brooks offered Lynch the opportunity to direct his first studio film, THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980), which was a huge success both financially and critically. Lynch was pushed even further into the mainstream when producer Dino De Laurentiis tapped him to direct the sci-fi epic DUNE (1985), an expensive flop and a great personal disappointment to Lynch. He maintained complete control over BLUE VELVET (1986), a disturbing tale of Middle American murder and madness that has belatedly achieved classic status after its initial mixed reception.
Since BLUE VELVET, Lynch has never looked back, creating personal, surreal, uncompromising films. He occasionally finds himself flirting again with the mainstream, most notably with his seminal TV series TWIN PEAKS (1990) and his Disney-produced inspirational tale THE STRAIGHT STORY (1999). With his recent INLAND EMPIRE (2006), Lynch continues to innovate and surprise, shooting the film on consumer-grade DV cameras and opting to self-distribute it. Lynch is also an active supporter of the Transcendental Meditation movement. Earlier this year he released a book, Catching the Big Fish, which details his creative process and his relation to the practice of TM.
Veteran fans and newcomers alike are invited to take a break form the summer heat and explore the odd, fascinating, and beautiful work of David Lynch, one of America’s most original filmmakers.
-- Christopher Sanew
BLUE VELVET
1986, David Lynch, USA, 120 min.
With Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan
Lynch’s consensus classic is a brilliantly sick, funhouse-mirror image of Our Town. Roses bloom on the picket fence, but fat, juicy beetles feast on the rot beneath, an opening metaphor for a story with a severed ear for a calling card. A naïve but curious college boy (MacLachlan) and his sunshiny sweetheart (Laura Dern) get to know the neighbors on the neo-noir side of town: ferociously sadistic Frank (Dennis Hopper) and Dorothy, the bruised-plum nightclub singer forced to become his sexual slave (Rossellini in the achingly vulnerable performance of her career). 35mm widescreen. (BS)
Saturday, July 7, 5:15 pm
Tuesday, July 10, 8:00 pm
Thursday, July 12, 8:30 pm
DUNE
1985, David Lynch, USA, 137 min.
With Kyle McLachlan, Sean Young, Sting
Hailed as a disaster by critics and audiences alike upon its release, DUNE has since become a cult classic, spawning countless special edition DVDs. While not completely faithful to author Frank Herbert’s popular series of novels, the film, with its then unheard-of $40 million budget, boasts lavish set design, fine performances by veteran actors (Max von Sydow, Jürgen Prochnow, José Ferrer, Brad Dourif), and excellent visual effects, including the first computer-generated human form in a motion picture. 35mm widescreen. (CS)
Sunday, July 22, 3:00 pm
Wednesday, July 25, 6:00 pm
THE ELEPHANT MAN
1980, David Lynch, USA/Britain, 123 min.
With John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins
Producer Mel Brooks offered Lynch his first mainstream film with this biopic of “Elephant Man” John Merrick (Hurt). Discovered as a virtual captive at a circus freak show, Merrick is taken in by Dr. Frederick Treves (Hopkins), who helps reveal the extraordinary man beneath the disfigurement. Lynch successfully manages the balance between his signature surrealist style and an empathetic story of human dignity, aided by Freddie Francis’s starkly beautiful black-and-white cinematography. The film’s 8 Oscar nominations included Best Picture, Director, and Actor. Archival 35mm widescreen print. (CS)
Friday, July 27, 8:30 pm
Sunday, July 29, 3:00 pm
INLAND EMPIRE
2006, David Lynch, USA, 172 min.
With Laura Dern, Justin Theroux
Marking Lynch’s first foray into digital video, INLAND EMPIRE is a labyrinthine fever-dream that follows a washed-up actress as she embarks on a new role, remaking a cursed movie. Armed with only his DV camera and a general outline, Lynch shot much of the film improvisationally, lending it a convincing sense of dream-state as it twists from a behind-the-scenes showbiz drama to a sitcom populated by talking rabbits to a mean-streets-of-Hollywood nightmare and back again. Dern, who appears in every scene, carries the film with a sensational one-of-a-kind performance. 35mm. (CS)
Saturday, July 14, 7:30 pm
Wednesday, July 18, 6:30 pm
LOST HIGHWAY
1997, David Lynch, USA, 135 min.
With Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette
A cryptic video left on a couple’s doorstep kicks off the second collaboration between Lynch and pulp-noir novelist Barry Gifford (WILD AT HEART). Shortly afterward, jazz musician Fred Madison (Pullman) is sent to prison for murdering his wife (Arquette). Then he is inexplicably replaced by a young auto mechanic named Pete (Balthazar Getty), who finds himself entangled with a mobster’s moll bearing more than a passing resemblance to Fred’s spouse. This post-modern horror freak-out features a knockout ensemble including Gary Busey, Robert Loggia, Richard Pryor, and a supremely creepy Robert Blake. 35mm widescreen. (CS)
Friday, July 20, 8:30 pm
Monday, July 23, 6:00 pm
Thursday, July 26, 8:15 pm
MULHOLLAND DR.
2001, David Lynch, USA/France, 145 min.
With Naomi Watts, Laura Harring
Using his favorite story hook of “A Woman in Trouble,” Lynch’s bizarre, beautiful mystery takes a walk on the dark side of Hollywood. Shortly after arriving in Tinseltown, starry-eyed starlet Betty (Watts) finds an amnesiac stranger (Harring) at her doorstep. As Betty becomes obsessed with unraveling her new companion’s mystery, we begin to suspect that neither woman is quite who she appears to be, and that they might not be strangers after all. MULHOLLAND DR. was hailed as a return to form for Lynch, earning him an Oscar nomination for Best Director. 35mm. (CS)
Saturday, July 28, 7:45 pm
Wednesday, August 1, 6:30 pm
THE STRAIGHT STORY
1999, David Lynch, USA, 112 min.
With Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek
Seemingly taking a big departure from his usual fare (and working for Disney, to boot), Lynch helmed this family-friendly tale of real-life senior-citizen adventurer Alvin Straight (Farnsworth), who embarked on a six-week, 300-mile journey on his lawnmower. When Alvin learns that his estranged brother (Harry Dean Stanton) has suffered a stroke, he climbs aboard his John Deere and makes his way from Iowa to Wisconsin. Along the way, he meets a colorful cast of quirky characters that one might expect to see populating Lynch’s vision of Americana. Farnsworth received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in his final role. 35mm widescreen. (CS)
Sunday, July 15, 3:00 pm
Tuesday, July 17, 8:00 pm
TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME
1992, David Lynch, USA/France, 135 min.
With Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise
When it was announced that Lynch was going to turn his beloved cult TV show
into a feature film, some felt that he was running short of ideas. Needless to say, Lynch gave them something wholly unexpected: a twisted melodrama (chronicling the last seven days of the life of Laura Palmer) that reduced most of the original cast to cameos. Murder victim Lee and disturbed dad Wise are both great at depicting barely controlled hysteria, and some of the sequences (especially a scary/funny traffic jam and the long roadhouse scene) are among Lynch’s boldest. New archival 35mm print. (Peter Sobczynski)
Saturday, July 7, 7:30 pm
Monday, July 9, 8:00 pm
Wednesday, July 11, 6:00 pm
WILD AT HEART
1990, David Lynch, USA, 124 min.
With Nicholas Cage, Laura Dern
Based on Barry Gifford’s novel, Lynch’s American Gothic road trip won the Palme d’Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. When Sailor (Cage) gets out of prison, he makes a beeline for his girl Lula (Dern), and together they flee from Lula’s psychotic mother, Marietta (Dern’s real life mother, Diane Ladd, nominated for Best Supporting Actress). Pursued by Marietta’s henchmen and short on cash, Sailor hooks up with a creepy hood named Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe, in a genuinely terrifying role) to pull one last job. Archival 35mm widescreen print. (CS)