L
David Lynch
Season 09 · Current Director

DAVID LYNCH

The painter of nightmares. David Lynch spent his career — from 1977 to 2006 — making films that exist nowhere else in cinema — works that operate according to their own internal logic, somewhere between waking life and the most vivid and disturbing dreams. Beginning with the industrial nightmare of Eraserhead and ending with the quiet devastation of Inland Empire, his filmography is one of the great sustained acts of personal vision in American art. Lynch was interested in what lies beneath the surface of ordinary life — the violence, the desire, the strangeness that polite society keeps hidden just out of sight. His films rarely explain themselves, and they are not supposed to. They are meant to be felt before they are understood, and in many cases they resist understanding entirely. That resistance is the point.

Director Profile
Jan 20, 1946
Missoula, USA
1977 – 2006
10 films
2 selected
09
Recurring Themes
Dreams and Reality The Dark Side of America Identity Obsession The Uncanny
Season 09 of 09
Career in Order

TIMELINE

1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
1977
Eraserhead
Horror · Fantasy
Feature
1980
The Elephant Man
Drama · Biography
🏆
Feature
1984
Dune
Sci-Fi · Adventure
Feature
OUR PICK
1986
Blue Velvet
Mystery · Thriller
🏆
★ Reviewed
1990
Wild at Heart
Crime · Romance
🌿
Feature
1992
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
Drama · Mystery
Feature
1997
Lost Highway
Thriller · Mystery
Feature
1999
The Straight Story
Drama · Biography
🌿
Feature
OUR PICK
2001
Mulholland Drive
Mystery · Drama
🌿 🏆
★ Reviewed
2006
Inland Empire
Drama · Mystery
Feature

THE PICKS

All reviews →
2001
10 / 15
2001 · 147 min · Mystery · Drama
Mulholland Drive

A cocktail of fantasy and real life, wrapped in a rotting Hollywood vibe. Lynch has masterfully portrayed the reality of a fantasy — the workings of our brains, human motivation, and the particular way that obsession rewrites everything around it.

1986
6 / 15
1986 · 120 min · Mystery · Thriller
Blue Velvet

Lynch undiluted — just not his most rewarding. A clean, linear good-versus-evil story told with all of Lynch's visual instincts fully intact. The use of colour is one of the film's genuine pleasures.