The Big Picture

• David Lynch: The Art Life is a refreshingly authentic take on Lynch, relying solely on intimate interviews with the director himself and close looks at the artwork he has created over the course of his career.
• The documentary discusses Lynch's childhood, which influenced his art and enabled a diverse perspective essential to his films.
• Lynch's refusal to explain his work adds to the mysterious allure of his idiosyncratic films. While The Art Life does not provide much direct commentary on his films, it gives insight into the inner workings of Lynch's mind and the creative world view that shapes his work.

While David Lynch did not singlehandedly initiate the movement towards cinematic surrealism, it's impossible to deny that his work has inspired a generation of filmmakers to take a stab at making “less than literal” projects. With ten great films and the phenomenon of Twin Peaks under his belt, Lynch has amassed a significant following who appreciate his wistfully idiosyncratic and occasionally beautiful approach to storytelling. He has become renowned for rarely discussing any of the specific plot mechanics or interpretations of his work. While it may not serve as a definitive “explainer” for any of his films, the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life offers a complex understanding of the philosophy and worldview that is essential to Lynch’s work.

What Is ‘David Lynch: The Art Life’ About?

Directed by Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Rick Barnes, and Jon Nguyen, David Lynch: The Art Life explores the origins of the filmmaker’s artistic efforts. Prior to launching a career in filmmaking, Lynch and his family moved between Montana, Washington State, and Idaho before he settled down and attended school at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Moving between so many dramatically different regions in such frequent succession could have easily been detrimental to Lynch’s emotional upbringing, or given him challenges in grounding his perspective. However, David Lynch: The Art Life suggests that the somewhat tumultuous nature of his childhood aided in giving Lynch a diversified understanding of America’s heartland, which would come to dominate many of his films.

There has certainly been no shortage of celebrity documentaries in recent years, as cinephiles are often keen to learn more about the artists who have significantly shaped popular culture discourse. However, David Lynch: The Art Life is a refreshingly bare-bones approach to a celebrity documentary, as it refuses to engage with any of the scandals or controversies within the filmmaker’s career. There’s no semblance of superficiality within the film — rather than recreating moments from his films or pulling extensive archive footage from past interviews, David Lynch: The Art Life is primarily comprised of a series of conversations with the man himself. Given how widely discussed Lynch’s work is within the cinephile community, it’s nice to see him take the opportunity to discuss the intentionality of his craft in his own words.

Lynch has occasionally appeared in his own work, as he notably plays the role of the fan-favorite FBI Agent Gordon Cole in Twin Peaks. While Twin Peaks: The Return in particular made use of his sense of humor, David Lynch: The Art Life shows how personable and articulate Lynch can be. While his films are known for their disturbing scenes and their dark subject material, Lynch never appears to be anything but authentic in the documentary. There’s no suggestion of artifice, which suggests a greater sincerity to his work. Lynch’s films aren’t “weird” just for the sake of it, but because that’s genuinely the idiosyncratic way in which he views the world.

‘David Lynch: The Art Life’ Examines the Enigma of Lynch

Although he’s best known for his films and television work, Lynch has engaged in many forms of artistic expression. He’s a well-renowned painter, sculptor, photographer, and even helmed a bizarre musical performance starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern. David Lynch: The Art Life includes never-before-seen footage of Lynch’s earliest work, including some of the experimental designs that he created while still in college. While simply getting to see these baffling creations is reason enough to make David Lynch: The Art Life worth watching, it's even more exciting to see that time has not suppressed his passions in any way. Even after years of acclaim and popularity, Lynch still holds on to the same artistic pursuits that dominated the earliest stages of his career.

Given how much prominence dreams and nightmares play within his work, it makes sense that David Lynch: The Art Life is stylized with the same surrealism present in Lynch’s films. By avoiding traditional talking heads, text inserts, and contextual information, David Lynch: The Art Life has a free form approach to logic that feels entirely appropriate given its subject. The stylized approach to the nonfiction form is what makes David Lynch: The Art Life such a worthwhile piece of art in its own right; while information about Lynch’s production and details of his childhood could have been lifted from any archival source, David Lynch: The Art Life aims to resemble the odd way that he looks at the world.

‘David Lynch: The Art Life’ Helps Explain Lynch’s Movies

One of Lynch’s most endearing qualities is his refusal to explain his work, relying on the audience to draw their own conclusions about their thematic connotations. Although it avoids discussing any of his films at length, David Lynch: The Art Life addresses how Lynch’s youthful experiences shaped some of the most iconic characters and scenes of his career. A discussion about passing by an injured woman on the streets of Philadelphia evokes a similar image of Isabella Rossellini in Lynch’s 1986 masterpiece Blue Velvet. Similarly, the footage on the stark, dimly lit industrial backgrounds can be linked to the similar environments in his 1977 directorial debut Eraserhead.

Although his films often examine the banality of evil, David Lynch: The Art Life examines the inherently optimistic way in which Lynch perceives the world. While he is keen to note that his journey to becoming a self-actualized artist was not without its challenges, his sense of satisfaction with his own achievements should serve as inspirational to any other aspiring storytellers. While the acclaim was nice, Lynch was never interested in making art that didn’t interest him personally. Given how unlikely it seems that he will have another film any time soon, David Lynch: The Art Life offers unparalleled insight into one of the greatest directors of all-time.

David Lynch: The Art Life is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

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