Fire is an example of why I think many of us might have sometimes taken Lynch for granted. This is ten minutes that is, on the surface, disturbing nightmare fuel.
It's a series of figures who do various things and tasks, starting with something out of a primordial cave drawing as a figure rubs what looks like a stick and starts a fire, and then other figures come in and dance and burn, a few floating figures that have an eyevall and like a sperm tail float around and there's what looks like a donut in the sky overlooking this backdrop that would make Edward Gorey raise an eyebrow, and what looks like a snowman's head melts and then... well, I should not give away the rest.
I think my point in mentioning all of this is that this is not some anomaly, but what Lynch did, as part of his consummate artistic life and process, and was so brilliant at. I have my own sort of interpretation of what Lynch was doing with these images, also via animation by Miyakawa and visceral string accompaniment by Zebrowski (I assume the skipping needle audio was from Lynch, it would track), but you will likely (and should) have your own take on what he and his collaborators are doing here.
It makes some kind of emotional or intuitive sense even as I cannot put into words what exactly it all... *is* and that is fine.
More than fine, this is what art should be where you are confronted with ideas that you have to reckon with, something that is not concrete and is absolutely in the abstract spaces of where we find ourselves not able to bring words that can describe things. That was one of Lynch's few gripes about being an artist, by the way, was the aftermath, having to be put on the spot to explain what he was doing in interviews and such (or as he once put it "the film *is* the talking").
Sometimes a film is not special or important because you can identify all of what is happening but the opposite, where you are drawn in because you are compelled (if you are staying and not just walking up and getting out in a huff of course) to engage with a work that doesn't conform to out expectations.
From that dizzying first shot of Jack Nance's head in space over the title card in Eraserhead to the final screaming image of Sheryl Lee in Twin Peaks the Return, that was Lynch's M. O. (Modus Operondi): you'll have a reaction to it, even if that reaction is bewilderment, excitement, fear, horror, delight, or especially a combination of those things.
Fire is as great an example as Lynch ever drew or directed; you feel as though you are in his world, but it is also your world now, too, because once a work is in the world it also belongs to an audience. Lynch is... Lynchian! How cool is that?
