Lynchian

Much like the loss of David Bowie, David Lynch’s death produced an extraordinary outpouring of love and grief that revealed how deeply he mattered to us. But the strength and size of this reaction came as a surprise to many. In life, Lynch was a wilfully obtuse cult filmmaker who had not been able to get a film financed for the last two decades of his life. In death, he is now in the pantheon of the all-time greats – both his work, and the man himself.

He leaves behind an adjective, ‘Lynchian’, a term used to describe work that echoes his. And yet, only Lynch could be truly Lynchian. Those who copy him fail to have an impact, and no one else can make the sort of films that he did. So why does his work affect people so deeply? Why do some find it haunting and unforgettable while others dismiss it as meaningless? Answering that question takes us into the strange realms of psychology, art and theology. We will discover which personality types are more comfortable with ambiguity, how Lynch’s creative and meditation practices overlap, and why a director whose work contains so much abuse of women has such a female-skewing fanbase.

Through a personal, first-person lens, Lynchian unpacks the mystery but refuses to solve the enigma of an artist who reshaped cinema from the inside out – where story gives way to dreams, and meaning lies not in answers, but in experience.