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Sunken Narratives: David Lynch’s FiRE by D Swan
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Protagonist Henry Spencer unnerved by tendril. image: D. Lynch
This is D Swan's second 'Sunken Narratives' column, see first here.
IN "FiRE (PoZaR)" (2015), A SHORT
written, drawn and directed by David Lynch, he latently addresses the title "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" (1992). Formulaically, he operates on an edge of aesthetics in which "the sublime" predominates.
This designation has been tracked back to Century One AD, however specifics are murky. During the 18th century, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury, and John Dennis, along with Joseph Addison, wrote of the Sublime as being connected with aspects of the natural world that could be threatening and aberrant.
Shaftesbury believed the Sublime was a characteristic surpassing pulchritude, whereas the latter considered it to be aesthetically discrete from beauty, while noting "an agreeable kind of horror".
Edmund Burke in 1757 produced a monograph, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. He claimed the binary effect, physiologically, of Sublimity was the cognitive qualities of fright and allure. He contrasted "negative pain" with positive pleasure, with the baleful quality being more vivid.
In the year 1764, Immanuel Kant declared that the Sublime was of three forms, the noble, the splendid and the terrifying.
Lynch understands that there's much in our subconscious and at the back of our consciousness that's horrifying; it could be the Sublime.
The bulk of "Eraserhead" (1977) qualifies as Sublime which may make it his "Citizen Kane" (1941) or "Pulp Fiction" (1994). Surely the sum of its beauteous horrour, as the term was once evocatively represented, ain't easy to beat, within his body of work or elsewhere.
Stage hand as Shiva. image: D. Lynch
The entirety of this first of his features is surrealist, as the protag navigates a ghastly bargain-basement phantasma. Henry Spencer's paramour's parents upstage almost any fabrication of any imaginable eerie movie; and then there's the baby(?) . .
The mystery and trepidation connected to entities of the past, and their inherent decay is key. Gothic exploitative filmmaking hinges to a great extent on such, however Lynch's exploitation is of that which is barely conscious.
It has been said that the basis of his vision is the magical fear one feels while transitioning from confused ignorance to grasping an understanding of the world sufficiently to function. Likewise the line between animate and otherwise is very blurry to a tot, both horribly and wonderfully so.
This perspective tends to dry up as we're whipped into shape to become a good consumer and worker for the benefit of our betters.
Lynch hasn't forgotten. He seemingly recalls specific cut-rate thrills found during this stage, watching perhaps one's parents' friends along with distant relatives, in all of their corny and passé ugliness, particularly as they come too close or grab ya.
We personally recall a kind of penultimate fear the very young attach to all things medical, especially to one's "insides" and the process of an "operation". Once we imagined a verbal warning from a strawberry plant of its Hannibal Lector-type intentions, to our violent disgruntlement.
His triumph is evident when Lynch psychoanalytically returns the viewer to a mainly neglected, naive state in which true, delicious and meaningful terror is accessible.
The question of what it is to be human and what is other constitutes a concern. To stand or walk is to, possibly unconsciously, insinuate that one is an Earthborn personage. Sitting, for our director would be an activity typical of our species, although he considers it to be a fascinating absurdity.
Is there an interim homo Sapiens and perhaps creatures that are either less advanced or macabre hideosities? His 2018 short "Ants Head" aptly asks us to ponder such a thing as does "Twin Peaks: The Return" (2017).
The Eternal Ganglion arises. image: D. Lynch
"The Elephant Man" (1980) wrestles with the puzzle while usefully adding heart or subjectivity. Though we watch Henry Spenser and could identify with, if not his everyman quality, then his plight - he maintains risibility; whereas, one is inclined to develop an emotional attachment to John Merrick.
Lynch is a filmmaker in which creative evolution is readily visible and this marks his first feature-film metamorphosis.
It's the obverse of our director's perversity. He's always shooting for the Most Improved award, because he's sincerely kind and digs bright Americana, which locates him squarely in the New Wave realm, although via Punk Rock.
"Blue Velvet" (1986) signified Lynch discovering a way to translate his vintage-based obsession into contemporary, on-location practicality. The "Twin Peaks" (1990-91) television series and much, later work couldn't have been, sans this growth.
"Mulholland Drive" (2001), a fiendishly lovely, rather diachronic postcard to Hollywood and the director's own career among other things, indicated yet another evolution, regarding data interpretation. "Inland Empire" (2006) emerged as a further progression not only for himself but film language and production, as has "The Return".
Projects including "The Straight Story" (1999) and "Wild At Heart" (1990) feature simple plots with objective truth. However, minimally, "Lost Highway" (1997), "Mulholland Drive" along with "Inland Empire" must be accessed subjectively, and will be different for each viewer. No Hollywood feature director, and few Europeans save for mainly Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-Luc Godard have been able to methodically use their filmic tools in such an open-ended use of cinematic lingo.
As with Hitchcock, he will also provide indication of a hand holding the photographic instrument, and in Lynch's case, it is exactly that as opposed to a camera.
Which brings us back to "Eraserhead". Of all the fascinating aspects of this once-in-a-decade masterpiece, is the lively frame, as if the tripod is moving slightly, concomitantly with sinister breathing. FiRE also features a fluctuating vista, here as a component of the ostensibly naive context.
The fly in the ointment, would be that a cross-media wizard of nearly unimaginable stature, may not have anyone nearby with the position of being a No Man; therefore this master of most media will digress without warning into useless absurdity.
Why does woman cry? image: D. Lynch
Mutual agreement throughout Lynch's fan base as to which moments would qualify as unnecessary at the least, and mood-destroying maximally, is unlikely.
However, we'll venture that, for all of its transcendence, "Lost Highway" (1997) cannot reach its stupendous conclusion without a long trip through extra footage, apparently found on the editor's floor.
There are those, including pop-culture maven, Heather McCollom, who'd have it that "Wild At Heart" loses the glory found inside any particular scene, when considered as an entirety. We concur.
What a spectacular, gorgeous vision of a particular potential Hell, is exhibited in "FiRE (PoZaR)".
A theater interior is presented. It could be an image from a future similar to that of "Dune" (1984), and not dissimilar to an enclosure inside "The Return", being dingily Victorian by way of the Elizabethan era, partially here, because of the unsteady light source.
Inside the proscenium a cut-to-black indicates a film-within-a-film. To remind that we're watching a less-technologically adept construct, a very primitively executed arch is then utilized. A scribbled drawing appears and the score refers to banging on bones.
There is a basic quality, suggesting various potential circumstances. The continuity could consist of very fundamental hand-drawn animation achieved simply via rapidly covering each image with the following one, lighting would obviously be incendiary. A mood of quaintness, if not redolent of the primordial, prevails.
Conceivably some kind of technological loss could've ensued. If there existed a Moon colony and a particular apocalyptic event occurred on Earth, the outpost could be cut off and generationally regress into a primitive state. Storytelling would then be influenced by the far reminiscences of the inhabitants and might desperately attempt to recreate a near-cinematic format, similar to that of FiRE.
Alfred Hitchcock received beaucoup grief over his use of a so-called false flashback featuring prominently within "Stage Fright" (1950). Why couldn't these complainers notice the motion picture began with the raising of a theater's safety curtain? As if they were unaware the full production was, as Norman Bates might reckon, "a fa-fa-falsity"?
Hitch's philosophical musings in that case, flew over his guileless audiences' head. Yet Lynch's stage-bound obscurity is frequently relatively accessible.
Theatricality as a component of his productions has been commented on often. "The Man In The Planet" could be "Eraserhead"'s nearly-Hadean puppet-string puller, existing in a dreadful netherworld. His presence tells us the following fiction could be considered camp spectacle by a spiteful deity.
A man clumsily strikes a match as a deus ex machina counterpart here. Possibly he's supplying the light we need to view the forthcoming imagery.
There's an implication that the house, which had to be built and the tree that had to be planted, that we next are shown would be unviable without the civilizing influence of combustion.
What would Danté say? Bosch?. image: D. Lynch
Enigmatic is Lynch's interest in the improbability that is fire. Beyond any Shiva-like ability to destroy, cleanse, and invite the new, it apparently has the allure of the inexplicable, cacodemonic; as if it is a mutation readily supplying damnable excitement.
This could relate to the Lynchian realization that our absurd epitome of a human form, necessary chiefly as transport for the brain, is at best barely maintainable and that flames are hungry for the fuel flesh contains.
The flame from the struck match flickers as does the apparent projector bulb that lights "David Lynch Theater". Possibly, here it's simply an answer to a prominent question asked within "The Return", "Got a light?"
Throughout his work, the director appears to find bodily apertures and that which extrudes from 'em - words & noise, tears, children, blood, vomitus, spice, etc. - to be of great interest.
Likewise, there exists an exquisite nexus of eroticism and horrour, utilized by most of Lynch's projects. As with Hitchcockian protags, and those of noir, our director's characters are forced into situations in which their terror is assuaged with love, and unfortunately, vice versa.
"Blue Velvet"'s underside becomes the setting for psychosexual pleasure and personal unease with a voyeuristic twist. Jeffrey breaks into Dorothy Vallen's empty apartment, only to be discovered upon her return. She then has him return to his hideaway while he watches her being forced into a grim sado-masochistic session with the exceedingly threatening Frank Booth. The former eventually finds himself violently satisfying her masochistic supplications, which, being a naif, causes him great consternation.
With extreme subtlety, as if we cannot be sure of how such a thing could materialize, a very dimensional organic hole comes into view atop the flat tableau containing the house and tree. However, this Freudian entity is evidently in no way eroticized.
Soon a forceful worm-like entity exits the womb. It has a barely connected, odious head that one hopes will not enter the foreground.
Could this be our director's Eternal Ganglion, that he'd imagine manifests early evolved consciousness, that manifests Henry Spencer's dancing worm, that manifests his baby? The nerve-tangle at the very basis of Lynch's earliest retrievable thoughts?
Of course human beginnings would be horrific as envisioned by even a cub David Lynch.
The visage, such as it is, appears to have voids as eye, nose and mouth receptacles. Out of the top two gashes, ghoulish hands sprout. From the digits further wormish forms burgeon with eyes, and Lynchian dangling neurology.
The hand of who or whatever is driving this tableau begins to melodramatically and violently shake the drawing. Rather than negating our suspension of disbelief, it creates a realistic immediacy, as the epithet, post-modern, proves inadequate.
After the raining of, one could guess, rocks, unusually unnourishing rabbit pellets, eggs or gruesome conceptualizations, two huge torches appear with childishly-drawn flame-trees.
A finely-sculptured object ponderously budges across the frame. Is it a primitive, magical icon? Through the one eye opening, fragmentary movement behind is visible, catalyzing a living, abstract artwork. As the object continues its trajectory, a misshapen mouth and ear appear, the latter of which comes close to being burned by the flame-tree.
A disembodied head comes into view - is she a living woman, her surviving spirit or another type of creature? The eyeholes are reminiscent of "The Birds"' (1963) unlucky chicken farmer, whose missing eyeballs are replaced by a closure of dried blood. Except she's bleeding from the openings - surely this could not be a dig at fellow independent Martin Scorsese, in connection with his cocaine-induced, bleeding eye-socket necessitated emergency room visit?
Hands with nervous-system inspired wrists cover the eyes. Behind the unhappy head, is a relatively contemporary vista, a plowed field and a multi-story building. The noggin in question fades away.
Abhorrent stick creatures, perhaps related to "The Return's" arm, envisioned as a sapling therein, which is emblematic of that ubiquitous tendril of nerves, move across the screen via unsettling choreography. Then it becomes wickedly obvious - they all have Boschian bird-beaks.
The score, by Marek Zebrowski, with no input from Lynch, is the final component making this one of the director's preeminent projects. The often abstracted accompaniment is elegant and yet evocative of elemental society. The purposely lumbering animation was performed by Noriko Miyakawa.
Everything on-screen communicates much, without the debilitation inherent in unnecessary dialogue.
We could be viewing a variation of early scenes from "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968); or are witnessing a moral fable regarding our planet as a mother and a mother as central to everything.
Do we see the baby found inside "Eraserhead" in a more viable form? Or maybe an ancestor of the balletically adept worm Henry ponders? Could we be experiencing a reinterpretation of "The Elephant Man" or Episode 8 of "The Return"? Common to all is a coming into existence of monstrosity.
It should be said that the largest disparity between our director and a large influence, the Master of Suspense, is that within the latter's work, other than rare exceptions, the universe is defined by science; whereas the former's enterprise inhabits one of proprietary and unending, multifaceted metaphysical evil.
Fortunately, Lynch sublimated arbitrary over-the-top demons, while sustaining his finest Sublimity for the sans pareil horrour of FiRE.
FIRE is available in a large screen format on YouTube or a small screen version Pitchfork.
Special thanks for help on this essay go out to Alan Diede, Maryann Huk and Joseph Jordan.
D Swan is a culture observer and creator, specializing in punk, Hitchcock, seedy glory and more, who can be reached .Posted on Jul 05, 2020 - 12:38 AM