"David, I Don't Think You Should Ever Have Children..."
Eraserhead. Blue Velvet. Twin Peaks. Mulholland Drive. Inland Empire. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the one and only David Lynch is hands down my personal favourite filmmaker of all time, a man who knows no boundaries when it comes to the creation of cinema and a director who continues to baffle, amaze and wonder even to this day, with the return of Twin Peaks currently gracing our screens and being as surreal and beautifully constructed as ever. With that in mind, the chance to see David Lynch: The Art Life can only be classed as a "no-brainer", a documentary constructed by the triage of Neergaard-Holm, Barnes and Nguyen, and a film which documents impressively the early stages of Lynch's life, beginning with his upbringing in the Western state of Montana through to his breakthrough love of artistic freedom and concluding just before the release of the surrealist 1977 classic Eraserhead.
Narrated completely by Lynch himself, The Art Life combines an awfully extravagant array of elements in order to gather an effective understanding of what it was like to be a young, doe-eyed, expressive Lynch, highlighting the extraordinary and wholly eclectic catalogue of Lynch's penchant for surrealist art and and adding context to its' foundations by channelling stories which seem to have crafted the entire back catalogue of Lynch's propulsion onto cinema. Whether it be a tale of a clucking, mentally ill woman on his street or the first sight of natural, naked beauty, Lynch's fundamental and wholly natural ability as a storyteller is really what makes the alluring appeal of his presence so impressive and when up against the challenge of holding the camera on just himself for ninety minutes, Lynch inevitably manages to pull it off. Whilst the film does lull in places, with the normality of Lynch's life never really holding its own when contrasted with the nightmarish images that haunt particular scenes of the documentary, The Art Life is an interesting portrayal of one man's quest onto cinema and whilst Lynch himself is never going to be for everyone, the documentary is clearly made for those who truly adore him. Myself included.
