Introduction
Circulated in advance of its screening at the London Film Festival in 1978, the Eraserhead press book set the tone for future expectations of films by David Lynch when it likened his first feature to 'a dream of dark and troubling things'. The same source forecast that this 'puzzling film of extraordinary power' would 'establish Mr Lynch as a master technician and visionary', though it would not be until the release of his fourth film Blue Velvet, some eight years on, that Lynch became recognised publicly under these terms. Having thus perfected the attributes that must be present to qualify as a cinematic author, Lynch became a recognised name among the many authorities on contemporary American film culture; so much so, in fact, that the term 'Lynchian' began to serve as a synonym to describe a quality of uncanniness that could show itself in other films produced in the new Hollywood style.
There can be no doubt that Lynch's standing reached its apotheosis in the early 1990s through his involvement with the Twin Peaks television event-cum-phenomenon. In the best traditions of tragedy, however, the hero must be made to suffer and, having been pictured on the cover of Time magazine under the headline the 'genius behind Twin Peaks', Lynch was subsequently vilified by the press who viewed Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, his cinematic prequel to the television soap opera, as both calculated and indecipherable. Nevertheless, one characteristic of a true artist is that they remain dogged and rebellious. And so it was with Lynch.
Sticking to the principles that had brought him public defamation, Lynch re-emerged with Lost Highway, an LA noir with a notoriously oblique structure that went some way to restore his credentials as a genuine auteur. Having then directed The Straight Story, a humanist film that was so 'straight' it defied all expectations for 'a David Lynch film', Lynch delivered Mulholland Dr., an LA crime melodrama that was much more in the enigmatic style on which his legend had been built. Indeed, Mulholland Dr. was widely held to be a modern masterpiece and Lynch's seat in the pantheon of new American auteurs was confirmed once more. At least, that is, until the inscrutabilities of Inland Empire had the critical jury retiring once more...
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