These are the wordswhich iconoclast filmmaker David Lynch says about what it means to live the'Art Life' of the title. Though Lynch ismostly known for his films and television work (Twin Peaks, conveniently enoughto the timing of this doc's release, returns for the first time in 25 yearsnext month), he's spent his entire adult life submerged as that of the artist,starting as a painter in his teens and making other experimental crafts andworks that led, through an organic process, to find film as an experimentaldirector in the late 60's.
Usually theterm 'Art Filmmaker' may be thrown about at auteurs or the like, but for Lynchthe moniker can be a completely true assessment. It's here too, and the fact that this is a look specifically at Lynch's lifefrom his childhood up to the making of his first feature, Eraserhead, that the filmmakers distinguish this production fromthe other documentaries on Lynch's life.
This is significant because if TheArt Life works it's because it needs to appeal to two groups that will cometogether in a theater or on VoD to watch this film: there will be the ones likemyself who have seen his features and television work as well as the first docfrom 1997 Pretty as a Picture (whichwas about his filmwork with collaborators as the talking heads) and/or the onefrom 2007 Lynch (sort-of about themaking of his experimental epic InlandEmpire and which had the distinction of being the kind of film that thedirector seemed to make a "statement" by calling him/herself blackANDwhite asthe name of their credit).
There arealso those who may come in much colder, having not only not seen those films,but perhaps are only vaguely familiar with the director and his many films(although, thankfully, the IFC Center in NYC is doing a retrospective of hisfilms to coincide with the doc). But thestrength of this particular movie goes deeper than that - it's effective as aportrait of an artist and how he came to be. Indeed, the strength of this is that this could be a good portal into the worldof David Lynch via his life and art and seeing the process first hand (it couldbe shown in an art class in a college just as well, if not more appropriately,than a film class).
We see about hisearly family life, the warm memories of his mother and fair memories of hisfather, and how these early, mostly happy memories left an impact on him. This isn't to say if one knows Lynch's workthere's nothing at all to connect the dots to; one of the anecdotes that makesan impact is about one night when out of nowhere he and his brother saw astrange, naked woman walking down the street in a daze (it made his brothercry, David simply didn't know what to do), and it's easy to see how this couldhave left an imprint that later showed up in memorable scenes in Blue Velvet and the pilot of Twin Peaks.
But, mostly, these stories are about getting to know what Lynch was like thenin those early years of the 50's and 60's, and how different environments could, often, leave an impact - he says living in Boise, Idaho, he associatedwith 'day, sunshine', and in Virginia it was 'night, darkness' - not least ofwhich being his many years in Philadelphia as a painter and making his firstabstract films (look up The Alphabetor The Grandmother when youcan).
The filmmaking method that the three directors behind this go for is wonderful: only once or twice do we seeLynch on screen talking, but his voice is there throughout telling us thesestories while at the same time we see Lynch in present day working in hisstudio (sometimes with his young daughter playing), witnessing the laboriousand sometiems bizarre methods he uses to make his paintings and sculptures andso on, and with full images of his illustrations mixed in with photos andarchive footage.
He's the only one wehear from so it's more personal and intimate, closer in a way to how De Palma or By Sidney Lumet were presented, only the artistic process isemphasized as much (or in sync) visually with the stories he's telling, so forexample Lynch may be telling us about how much he hated briefly attending theBostom Museum School, and the painting in front of us is called 'Things ILearned in School Painting'.
The paintings and art are garish, crude, and, if one didn't know Lynch anybetter, seeming like it could come from some deranged mental patient. That's what's so great about getting to hearLynch's stories and see what his life was like; while he has often been guardedabout where he gets his ideas from in interviews, he has no problem at all intelling stories about his parents or friends or moments that stood out to himin his life (a particular incident involving a Bob Dyland concert and beingstoned stands out as showing how outside the pack he was at the time, or how hefirst met Jack Fisk, future production designer for Mulholland Drive and The Straight Story among other films).
On the contrary, Lynch is an assured, calm racounteur, and seeing hisartistic development in these stories as well as on screen is inspiring. One may never quite know how such gorgeouslygrotesque paintings and unsettling movies come from this man, but the manhimself is a delight to behold as a consumate artist - preferably with thecigarettes and coffee, of course.
