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 | Eraserhead /
Keyhole
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I knew David Lynch got me - Guy Maddin, gapersblock.com
Now that David Lynch has passed, his legacy and influence are being assessed and/or reassessed by everyone. There’s lots of lists, thinkpieces and threads on the idea of “Lynchian” and what movies fall under that category. Personally - I think it’s time to retire the Lynchian term (if you read my blog regularly then you know I’ve been pushing this for years). The term is almost always misused and it cheapens his legacy. Anything slightly “weird” gets called “Lynchian”. David Lynch never owned “weird”. He was a certainly a master and crafting weird and surreal scenes but he didn’t have a patent on weird or surreal. As a fan of Lynch’s movies beyond surface-level nonsense like “oh man his movies are so cRaZy”, the last thing I want is his work being used as an a reference point for stuff like
Under The Silver Lake, Jacob’s Ladder &
Memento. Those are not a representation of David Lynch. It’s like when a movie has a tense shot of a doorknob slowly turning and it gets called “hitchcockian”.
With that being said…I compiled a collection of side-by-sides between David Lynch and someone I consider to be one of the better examples of one of his unofficial students; Guy Maddin. Much better words will be said on David Lynch by someone with a better than I. I just thought it would be nice to share some comparisons between one of my personal favorite filmmakers that found influence from another one of my personal filmmakers.
When I discovered that Lynch's first major short film was the same length as THE DEAD FATHER and was about his grandmother it just really seemed like he'd felt the same need - Guy Maddin, Fandor
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Eraserhead /
The Dead Father
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Maddin is hardly a household name so it’s understandable that he’s almost never brought up in the Lynchian conversation (even when Isabella Rossellini is/was a regular actor in the films of both directors). But he’s far more legitimately influenced by Lynch than people like Christopher Nolan or Ari Aster.
And to be clear - Guy Maddin’s films are not Lynchian. Certain specific moments in certain specific movies of his have definitely been inspired by Lynch (as you’ll see below), but that doesn’t make Maddin’s films Lynchian (not to split hairs here but isolated moments within a full film that may or may have not pulled from Lynch doesn’t equate Lynchian).
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| Eraserhead / Archangel |
When I first saw Lynch’s Eraserhead I realized in an instant that he made a movie about me - Guy Maddin, deadmediasociety.com
While most of these comparisons go back to Eraserhead, you’ll find a lot of interesting (sometimes) coincidental similarities between most of Lynch’s films (it should also be noted that some of these similarities, homages and reaches go beyond David Lynch to older filmmakers by people like Luis Bunuel & Fellini).
